Proton Torpedo's
    The purpose of this page is to use the calculations provided on my Imperator page to determine the yield of a Proton Torpedo. For those of you who do not know what a Proton Torpedo is I'll explain, very briefly. A proton torpedo is the standard missile weapon used by the most Star Wars Universe fighter craft. It's the weapon used by Luke Skywalker to destroy the Death Star. And in one of the SW novel 64 Proton Torpedo's were sufficient to knock down one shielding section of an Imperator class Star Destroyer. So rom that I can easily use the figure from my Imperator shielding calculations to determine the yield of a Proton Torpedo.
       Proton Torpedo Yield (From Theory One)
Shield Strength = 16.85 Gigatons / 7.04e19J
Torpedo Yield = 263.28 Megatons / 1.10e18J

    Proton Torpedo Yield (From Theory Two)
Shield Strength = 50.55 Gigatons / 2.11e20J
Torpedo Yield = 789.84 Megatons / 3.30e18J

    Now I should add that these were most likely not standard Proton Torpedo's but instead were special high yield torpedo's. This seems logical since in several of the X-Wing series books we have fighter craft survive up two simultanous torpedo impacts. I think all would agree that it's ridiculous to believe that a massive ISD has shields only thirty-two times stronger then a minscule X-Wing.

     It also seems that the high yield torpedo's are a relatively rare weapon, and are perhaps of somewhat prohibitive cost. Another possible answer is that these are ususally used for bombardment of planetary targets by capital ships, and it was an emergency measure froced upon the Rebellion due to a lack of sufficient supplies.

    Now I know that many of you on seeing how powerful the torpedo armament of an Imperator is will want to know why they aren't used more in anti ship combat. That's really very simple, Imperial Point Defense Systems have no trouble shooting them down so they're just a waste in ship to ship combat, this is mentioned in the novel Spectre of the Past and so can be easily verified. The Black Fleet series also mentions the effectiveness of Point Defense Systems.

    Some people will attempt to dispute these conservative numbers by claiming that Imperial particle shields are considerably weaker then the ray shields. What they fail to understand is that Turbolasers are particle weapons and also impact the particle shields. The common counter claim to this point is a line from the EGtVV that claims that turbolasers impact on the ray shields and proton torpedo's impact particle shields.

    The problem with this line of reasoning is very simple, the EGtVV while a "fun" document is not the most accurate of sources, and falls to a simple mistake; very common in low level official sources. This line is based on the common claim that turbolasers are actual real life LASERs. As we know that is not so then this line is easily shown to be based on incorrect reasoning and so is wrong and can be ignored as being over ridden by Canon.

    The belief that Turbolasers are real life LASERs is illustrated by several official references talking of "coherent light" being fired from Turbolasers. That's the definition of a LASER beams, but this is over ruled by canon events from the movie. It's clearly seen in canon that Turbolasers share none of the properties of a LASER so they can not impact against ray shields.

    On his website located Here Lord Edam de Fromage (also known as Sorborus or Michael Griffiths) determines a possible range for proton torpedo yields. His results give a range between 100 KT and 1.5 MT, now when looking at these numbers you should consider that they likely represent the yields for anti fighter torpedo's not the anti ship versions. On this same page a comment from C.S. Strowbridge states that according to information found in WEG the standard fighter mounted anti ship torpedo's are ten to fifteen times stronger then the anti fighter versions. Giving an anti ship yield ranging between, 15 MT and 22.5 MT. Now these are the standard torpedo's, and from this it seems obvious that the standard anti ship torpedo's were not used in favor of some high yield variation. Perhaps something similar to the emissions type torpedo's carried by B-Wings, or are usualy used for planetray bombardment and are not classified as anti-ship weapons but as bombardment weapons.

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