"The Devastator can be an unforgiving mistress." - 2nd Lt. Ernest "Moof" Gibson, TCSF
By popular (one, implied) demand, it's a post about Wing Commander Prophecy's TB-80 Devastator torpedo bomber (class a)!
The Devastator is a single-engine, six-person torpedo bomber designed around a central plasma cannon of the same type used aboard capital ships. Devastators serve with elite units aboard fleet carriers. It is the heaviest carrier-based bomber to serve with Confed.
Devastators are typically reserved for elite units. Its large size and complex technology require that they serve aboard fleet carriers and large installations, with the smaller TB-81 Shrike operating from smaller runways.
During the initial Nephilim invasion, assigned Devastators were not yet present aboard the TCS Midway. A squadron transferred aboard from TCS Eisen at the height of the fighting at G'mar as part of the Wolf Pack and they went on to serve with distinction.
Lt. Casey commanded a Devastator to great success during the battle, including using the bomber to paint a target on a large Nephilim fleet that was dispatched by a captured plasma cannon and in the final attack on the alien Tiamat dreadnaught.
In 2681, the TCIS tested an experimental updated model in combat aboard the TCS Cerberus. The TB-81-S Black Devastator features improved speed and armor as well as exchanging its Stormfire for a tachyon cannon and its minelayers for rocket pods.
In total, the Devastator is flyable in seven missions in Prophecy and four in Secret Ops. It's maybe best remembered for the set of missions in the H'rissith series where the player can choose between flying it or the Vampire.
The Devastator appears in five cutscenes, including its takeoff, win/lose versions of the target disc firing and the winning endgame. The model is intended to be 36 meters long; see what you think!
BTS: one thing to understand about Wing Commander Prophecy's ship selection is that it was designed for the canceled multiplayer. As a result, there are multiple ships of the same class with planned advantages, disadvantages and unique features.
Some of these aspects made it into the final game, like the opposing maneuvering pods on the Panther and Vampire, while others were totally cut, like the Shrike's radar jamming device or the fighters' anti-missile chin turrets.
The initial Devastator design brief was by Ben Potter. The general idea was that it would be especially devastating (har har) to capital ships but not even be able to target fighters normally. Everything but the plasma weapon ended up being sanded down to just 'heaviest bomber'!
The plasma gun is a little confusing, given the fact that the Devastator appears late in the game just after the Midway captures and studies an alien plasma cannon. These two things are not intended to be connected, though, and the Devastator is not a brand new ship in Prophecy.
The Devastator's five turret positions are right, left, rear, top and bottom (the bottom turret is towards the rear). You can only occupy the first three but all fire automatically.
The appearance of the Devastator was by Sean Murphy, a top artist and veteran of Prowler, Super Wing Commander and Wing Commander IV. A surprising amount of his early sketches have survived!
Sean was also the model for Super Wing Commander's Jazz Colson… and he's probably most famous as the body reference for Roger Wilco In Space Quest V!
Sean is also the reason why you see a Devastator as the final flyby at the end of the game. He was responsible for that last shot and it had to be completed before the team was sure what type of ship you would fly in the mission. So he chose his design!
Secret Ops's fiction also includes a wonderful article about the Devastator formulated as a transcript of a lecture on flying the ship. It's one of the funniest SO articles!
As an aside, despite their apparent retirement by Secret Ops we do see Longbows later in the Wing Commander timeline: they make a neat cameo appearance in the space station map in Wing Commander Arena (2007/2701).
As a second aside, buses do still exist in the Wing Commander universe. There are hover buses on Anhur and Carl LaFong refers to missions flying Draymans (Draymen?) as "flying bus" assignments in the strategy guide.
But wait, lets talk about history, too! The Devastator is named after the Douglas TBD Devastator, a torpedo plane that served with the US Navy in the early days of World War II. Its service ended after an entire squadron were shot down in the opening moves at Midway.
There's a deep loop back to WC here, too! In Action Stations we learn that Commander Turner is descended from the commander of that heroic-but-doomed Devastator squadron, Lt. Cmdr. John Waldron!
Acclaimed filmmaker John Ford happened to be shooting with the squadron just before the battle. He cut a short film named Torpedo Squadron No. 8 as tribute to the men. If you're interested, you can see these real heroes (and Turner's ancestor) online!
Back to the future, we close by asking: could the Devastator's story ever continue? Well, we came close: according to this promotional artwork, the Devastator would've played a role in Privateer 3. Sadly, video game publishers sometimes make bad choices.
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