Demolisher (Gladiator-class)

Warning: This infobox has missing parameters: designer, navy, type and unrecognized parameters: modules, class, era, taskforce

"Hurry, Artoo. Just how long can it take to sabotage a Star Destroyer?"

―C-3PO to R2-D2^[src]

The Demolisher was a Gladiator-class Star Destroyer used by the Galactic Empire around 15 BBY.^[2]

History

Demolisher-SWArmada — *Demolisher* entering a planet's atmosphere

The Demolisher was Admiral Screed's flagship during the early years of the Galactic Empire. He used the vessel while on campaigns in the Outer Rim Territories.^[4] At some point, the Demolisher was stolen from an Imperial repair dock by the space pirate Gir Kybo Ren-Cha and his crew. They intended to use it against the Tammuz-an space navy in an attempt to plunder their world.^[2]

During the battle, R2-D2 (who had been captured alongside C-3PO) reversed a proton torpedo he was ordered to load into one of Demolisher's launch tubes, causing it to explode and cripple the Star Destroyer.^[2]

Behind the scenes

An interesting feature of this ship was that turbolaser shots fired always seemed to emit from the ring around the reactor dome on the bottom of the ship, or from the reactor itself. This is similar to ships in Star Trek, which possess phaser banks on rings on the top or bottom of the ships. Due to the amount of projectile ordnance the Demolisher possessed, the ship's design seemed to have been focused on missile delivery, suggesting that Gladiators were used as artillery support ships, and not actually used for capital ship combat. The small number of traditional capital ship weapon emplacements would only be a threat to small ships, such as blockade runners, and the missile launchers would have to be used as the primary weapons.