Gunnery captain

"There goes another one."
"Hold your fire."

―Hija and Bolvan^[src]

Gunnery captain was an assignment on the Star Destroyers of the Galactic Empire. The gunnery captain was tasked with overseeing the chief gunnery officer, who managed the main weaponry of the vessel. Only one chief gunnery officer could serve under the command of a gunnery captain.^[2]

Notable gunnery captainsEdit

The Human male Bolvan served the Imperial Navy as a gunnery captain^[1] aboard the Star Destroyer Devastator during the Battle of Tatooine in 0 BBY. While Imperial stormtroopers boarded a Rebel corvette, Tantive IV, Bolvan's chief gunnery officer, Lieutenant Hija, spotted an escape pod jettisoned from the vessel. Bolvan ordered his subordinate not to fire on the pod, because the Star Destroyer's sensors detected no lifeforms.^[2]

The only known gunnery captain to date, Bolvan first appeared in the December 1976 novelization of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope,^[2] ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster.^[3] Bolvan's scene also appeared in the released version of A New Hope. He was identified as "Captain" both in the film's script^[4] and in the novel. Later, the 21st issue of Marvel Comics's Star Wars series and West End Games's Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook gave two different names for the captain—Wermis and Bolvan. In 2007, the fourth chapter of StarWars.com's Visual Guides identified these two as separate persons—Bolvan as the black-uniformed officer who ordered Hija not to fire on the escape pod, and Wermis as the captain of the Devastator. Finally, in 2008, the The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia developed the gunnery captain commission for Bolvan to solve the problem of two captains on the same ship.

The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia (First identified as Gunnery captain) (Under Bolvan, Captain)