TIE Boarding Craft

I only had a few references for this craft: the Incredible Cross-Sections had a picture of it in the Star Destroyer’s hanger, and the Technical Commentaries website had a short article on it. So, I had a little leeway in how I built it. Most of the building consisted of adding onto the AF TIE Bomber. A Lego ski made up the landing leg (attached by brass rods), and random plastic parts made up the details. I used a WWII plane landing gear piece for the retractable cutting torch, and I used a leg piece from a model AT-AT for the main hatch.

Painting consisted of light grey, dark grey, and black. And that’s about it.

The TIE Boarding Craft was a repurposing of the TIE Bomber chassis. It removed the bomb chute, and replaced the bomb bay with a pressurized troop cabin. The cabin was sealed with a slide-open hatch designed to grip onto the docking hatches of freighters and cruisers.

After a Star Destroyer would disable an enemy ship, the TIE Boarding Craft would launch and attach itself to the docking hatch. The small transport featured a cutting torch that could open most hatches with little difficulty. It would then unload its compliment of 12 fully-armed Stormtroopers. This assault tactic ensured that the capture of enemy vessels was quick and unrelenting. Darth Vader employed a TIE Boarding Craft to commandeer Leia Organa’s Tantive IV transport in his search for the Death Star’s plans.