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Star Destroyer

A Star Destroyer is a type of fictional starship from the Star Wars universe. Built by the Galactic Empire, they are massive, powerful ships, some of which are capable of destroying an entire city. Despite this, Star Destroyers are actually more analogous to Carriers than to classical naval destroyers. Usually, the craft carry an Admiral in charge of operations, but sometimes even higher ranking Imperials supervise operations. The more common 'bulk' cruisers are a great deal smaller than their sister craft and could, in theory, fit within the docking area of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer.

Their are three major types of Star Destroyers:

Star Destroyers are seen in all three movies of the original trilogy. Some are destroyed when their weak point is detected - their bridge module protrudes above the main body and is therefore more vulnerable to attack. Once the bridge with the command crew is destroyed, the ship becomes nearly defenseless.

The historical significance (within the storylines history) for the name is that when this class first appeared it was more powerful than the total defence forces of most systems at the time. Therefore a single Star Destroyer could be used to destroy an entire systems defences, hence the name.

Star Destroyers have featured prominently in many Star Wars computer games.

See also : Star Wars