Keep in mind, Lucas watched a LOT of WWII Aerial combat footage and listened to a lot of radio chatter for those scenes. I'm sure that influenced things a bit.

I think you will find Mr Lucas grew up watching a lot of Flash Gordon movies and I'm pretty sure the 1969 film "Battle of Britain" was the combat feel he was trying to convey in the dogfight finale. Some of the references may indeed have no logical basis, but were there to sound cool and somewhat military. This is a space opera after all.

They said two ten, not 210.

210 woud make sense were this ground or wet navy combat but not in the air or space. You need the third dimension for calling targets.

Two Ten is just short for saying two o'clock by ten o'clock.

Call the nose of your craft 12o'clock making your left wing 9 o'clock your right wing 3 o'clock and your rear 6.

The Ten would be the location of the target on a second clock face, this one being vertical.

Every airline/airforce on earth uses headings. Although with a frame of reference like the ground high and low works to help with the third deminsion. I think it is far more likely Lucas heard something an actor said wrong on an old war movie, thought it was cool, and put it in the script. Nothing in star wars combat is remotely spacelike unfortunately, it is all based on aircraft combat. Cool, but not realistic. I don't think he put enough thought into it to have two clockfaces but I could be wrong.

Though I do agree that it may have been nothing other than cool sounding dialogue my interpretation makes sense from a space combat point of view.

Calling out ten o'clock high would be useless in space, how would you spot that darkly lit/un-lit ship against a black background

Of course it was explained at some point (Note: not in the movies) that Proton Torpedoes could have a programmed trajectory and were highly maneuverable.

Ooh, there's an upgrade card idea, just there: I've… er… programmed my missiles to go round that asteroid, so I get 6 attack dice…"

In ROTJ, they start using degrees. As cool as I think it is, I doubt there was any sort of logic. During the deleted scenes on the blu-ray, they feed the pilots a list of generic lines, so it's not like it was written into the script.

Also, that's assuming they use the same units of measure in star wars. The "12 o'clock high" thing is in reference to a clock; the star wars chatter could be in reference to some mundane thing we just don't know about.

When ploting corses we used degrees.

Also, as a side note, I am sure this dialog stands up considering Han has the ship that can make the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs.

...and there are space wizards that can move a torpedoes at right angles.

You sir/madam, amuse me. The parsecs thing had to be a fluke that Lucas tried to correct later on. "Oh, well the Kessel Run is in black hole territory so you have to avoid them so you would travel a greater distance whereas the Falcon had a better navicomputer to allow it to fly closer to the holes and thus travel less distance..." blah blah blah.

The last bit about moving torpedoes at right angles made me smile. I think I always wondered why everyone else's Protons just shot straight out but Luke's curved to a ridiculous degree, to the point that it seemed only someone with the power of the force could have even pulled off that shot. Of course it was explained at some point (Note: not in the movies) that Proton Torpedoes could have a programmed trajectory and were highly maneuverable.

my attempt to bring levity to this topic...

Concerning Kessel; There was a discussion with some other, friends of mine, Star Wars geeks, years ago. We had discussed the fact that to successfully navigate the Kessel system(a smuggler's route to the uninitiated), a pilot would weave in and out of the 18 parsec section of space, between the black holes. We felt that Han knew someone that had made the run in the modified craft in under 12 parsecs via sling shot around the edges of the singularities.

"It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs"

He made it sound like a race... either way we went WAY off topic.

I always thought that he was braging about computing speed of his navigation computer.

They said two ten, not 210.

210 woud make sense were this ground or wet navy combat but not in the air or space. You need the third dimension for calling targets.

Two Ten is just short for saying two o'clock by ten o'clock.

Call the nose of your craft 12o'clock making your left wing 9 o'clock your right wing 3 o'clock and your rear 6.

The Ten would be the location of the target on a second clock face, this one being vertical.

Every airline/airforce on earth uses headings. Although with a frame of reference like the ground high and low works to help with the third deminsion. I think it is far more likely Lucas heard something an actor said wrong on an old war movie, thought it was cool, and put it in the script. Nothing in star wars combat is remotely spacelike unfortunately, it is all based on aircraft combat. Cool, but not realistic. I don't think he put enough thought into it to have two clockfaces but I could be wrong.

I agree with your first sentance, believe or not tactics wise the USAF finds the first movie sound. I don't think anyone ever asked them about the 2nd and 3rd. I do find the 3rd one sound.

At this point in time we can't move ships like how they move in the SW movie but in the future if we can we would be better off with those manuvers combined with traditionlly accepted ideas of motion in space.

Oooh this whole thread is just so geeky; I feel right at home! Oh and it's **** interesting as well ;-)