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Battle of Hoth

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following the destruction of the first Death Star and other losses at the hands of the Alliance, the Empire began dispatching thousands of remote probe droids to all sector of the galaxy. One of these probe droids located the Alliance's Echo Base on Hoth, established after the evacuation of the Massassi Base on Yavin 4, and was able to relay information on the base before being destroyed by Han Solo and Chewbacca. A fleet of Star Destroyers under the command of Darth Vader was sent to destroy the base. Admiral Ozzel, acting against the established battle plan, believed that he could surprise the Alliance forces by coming out of hyperspace at the edge of the system and causing them to panic. However, Ozzel's plan backfired, as the Alliance was alerted to the presence of the Imperial fleet and was able to put its evacuation plans into effect. Ozzel was executed for this blunder, and Captain Piett was promoted to fill the void. Vader then sent General Veers to the planet's surface with a group of AT-ATs known as Blizzard Force, which decimated the Alliance ground forces and destroyed the main power generator. With the ground battle lost, the Alliance put their early warning of the Imperial invasion to its best use, and quickly evacuated key personnel and equipment under heavy fire from their v-150 ion cannon. The majority of the Alliance's Hoth base staff escaped to scatter across the galaxy, and nearly half of its larger starships were able to evade the Imperial blockade. The Battle of Hoth became one of the most legendary and infamous battles of the Galactic Civil War, primarily due to the fact that Imperial propaganda experts sent holodocumentarians to Hoth with the main troops, and later used footage from the battle to paint a glowing picture of the "heroic snowtroopers" of the Empire. What was lost in the documentaries were Ozzel's blunder and Vader's fixation on locating Luke Skywalker, since it was Vader who ordered the Star Destroyers of the blockade to target a single ship - the Millenium Falcon - while allowing others to escape.