The Imperial Navy was renowned not only for being one of the largest navies in galactic
history, but also for its use of some of the most powerful warships ever created.
The most famous one being the Executor, which was pretty much just a city of turbo lasers
and gun batteries placed on top of a moving platform.
But there was one ship that was even more powerful than the Executor, so powerful that
it could literally destroy the Executor in a single blow.
It’s known as The Eclipse, and it was the most powerful warship ever constructed in
Galactic History.
And not only that, but in total volume alone, it was also the largest ship ever created
making most ships compared to it look like tiny specks.
And just to give you a better idea of its size, it was almost 11 times longer than a
standard Imperial class Star Destroyer.
The Eclipse's fire power was what really made it the deadliest warship ever constructed.
It was armed with 550 heavy laser cannons, 500 turbolasers, 75 ion cannons, and it’s
most important weapon, a death star like superlaser which was mounted at the very front of this
monster.
This superlaser had two thirds the power of the original death star’s superlaser.
So although it couldn’t completely obliterate planets, it was capable of penetrating planetary
shields and cracking the crusts of entire planets, effectively
killing most life on the planet as a result.
The superlaser was also capable of one shotting any other warship or space station.
So if the Executor were to roll up in front of the Eclipse, all the Eclipse would really
need to do is aim its superlaser and one shot the Executor out of existence.
On top of its deadly arsenal, The Eclipse had some of the most advanced shield systems
ever implemented onto a ship, making it almost impossible to destroy through conventional
weapons.
Actually these shields were so powerful, that it allowed the ship to literally ram into
enemy ships and destroy them without sustaining any real damage to itself.
Now if you were an Admiral and you saw this monster appear on the enemy’s side of the
battle, the most logical thing to do would be to retreat and get out of there before
its superlaser could destroy your entire fleet.
But not even that would be possible, as the eclipse was outfitted with 10 gravity well
projectors, the same gravity well projectors seen on Interdictor ships which block enemy
ships from escaping into hyperspace.
And because there were 10 of them, spread across miles apart from each other, destroying
all of them by sending starfighters or space troops would be almost impossible, as they
would be wiped out either by the ship's’ cannons or by swarm of starfighters.
Starfighters that would exit the The Eclipse’s massive hangers, which were so massive that
they could actually hold a small star destroyer, like the victory class star destroyer.
But instead they typically held 600 Tie Fighters and 96 Tie bombers.
The hangers also held essentially a small army, containing 150,000 troops, 100 AT-AT
walkers, 5 pre-made deployable garrison bases, and even an entire legion of Imperial Royal
Guards.
The ship did however need a crew of about 700,000, with about 4,000 being gunners.
Now where was this ship during the Battle of Endor?
Well it was under construction.
The Eclipse was supposed to act as Emperor Palpatine's personal flagship, and it essentially
took the Empire’s two greatest creations, the death star and the Executor, and forged
them together to form this ship.
It started construction around the time of the Battle of Yavin, and it took about 9 to
10 years until it became fully operational.
It was kept hidden by eventually being taken to the Empire’s secret fortress world of
Byss within the deep core where it was taken command by the reborn Emperor Palpatine, who
came back to life by transferring his spirit through the force into his backup clone bodies.
The reborn Palpatine would then use The Eclipse to rain havoc on the New Republic fleet, up
until it was destroyed when it was consumed by Palpatine's Force Storm, which was disrupted
and redirected towards the ship by Luke and Leia during the Battle of Pinnacle Base.
Another ship was created of very similar design, named the Eclipse 2.
But it too was later destroyed after R2 D2 took control of its computer banks and set
it to collide into the Galaxy Gun, which was another massive super weapon, resulting in
both of them being destroyed as a result.