This tweet got me wondering: what Rapiers do we see in the course of the movie? The big numbers are vinyl stickers that could be easily swapped so that Lightnings could play different ships scene to scene. AD stayed up late one night and here are our findings...
There are twenty Tiger Claw Rapiers involved in the actual narrative of the movie: ten in Angel's squadron, two that are destroyed in the Kilrathi ambush, six that scramble to defend the Tiger Claw and two that are left onboard during the battle.
Blair flies Rapier 13, which is the same one that belonged to Bossman. A scene that made a bigger deal about this right before his patrol with Angel was cut.
Rapiers 21 and 71 are on the flight line when Maniac and Rosie pull their flirty landing stunts. 21 is also present during the scramble but it isn't clear if it's one of the six that take off.
You can see Rapiers 44 and 72 in the establishing shot of the flight deck when Blair and Maniac arrive. 72 is also part of the scramble where we can see it's flown by "Lt. Simon Wilkinson".
Also seen scrambling is Rapier 65.
Rosie is 56 and Maniac is 64.
And yes Angel is Rapier 69. The second unit shots of the cockpits in use have numbers that are intended to match the ships, too... here you can see Angel's dashboard says SR 69.
Unfortunately they don't ALWAYS match. Blair's is correct but then we have a shot used for Maniac that must've been intended for him. And one for Rosie intended for an otherwise unseen Rapier 36 (possibly Hunter).
That's nine out of twenty! We weren't able to find any more in the movie itself, but we did dig up this behind the scenes photo of Bishop's Rapier 35 on the timeslice rig for an ultimately unused 'bullet time' sequence.
Finally, you have to love these two extremely George Lucas mirrored shots where we see Rapiers 21 and 65 backwards!
Finally was actually a lie because we also went through and figured out what the Wing Commander I killboard would look like for the events of the movie. And here it is! (Does not include the novel or the sequels, though that would be fun to figure out...)
Notes: Angel and Knight's names are spelled slightly differently in the movie. Tolwyn refers to Blair and Maniac as First Lieutenants but Blair introduces himself as Lt. JG, which makes more sense. Angel gets a Golden Sun for surviving the loss of her fighter (sorry Rosie).
Paladin sinks two capital ships and the Tiger Claw three (plus one captured). Angel's Skipper kill wouldn't show up on this board. And then the Concordia battlegroup is shown destroying three capital ships but may have scored as many as 34 (out of the original fleet of 40).
Sadly, it does seem to contradict this article added to the Super Wing Commander Claw Marks about Maniac earning his ace ribbon. Unless it happened between scenes in the movie...!
Maniac and Blair start the movie already sharing a partial for the Kilrathi blockade runner they blow up in the Wing Commander Academy pilot, which is actually mentioned in the Confederation Handbook!
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