TIE cycling rack

The TIE cycling rack, officially known as the Imperial SFS cycling rack and simply as a TIE hangar rack was a modular starfighter storage and launching device manufactured by Sienar Fleet Systems for the Imperial Starfighter Corps. It was designed to retrieve, store, service and launch TIE series starfighters, usually TIE/ln space superiority starfighters, from Imperial hangars to discourage independent landing capabilities and training and teach Imperial pilots to rely on higher authority.

The TIE cycling rack was a starship launching device designed by Sienar Fleet Systems and used by the Galactic Empire's Imperial Starfighter Corps to store and launch TIE series starfighters. The rack's main component was a transfer guide suspended from the hangar ceiling on scaffolding. Retaining claws built into rails in the transfer guide grabbed and held onto the TIE stored in the rack and moved it around as required, negating the use of the ship's ion engines while inside its mothership. The cycling rack was a modular, adjustable design, allowing Imperial engineers to expand and reconfigure the racks to hold up to 72 TIE series starfighters at any given time.

The first stage of the rack's standard configuration was the boarding rack, where Imperial Starfighter Pilots entered their ships through a boarding platform which connected to the TIE's open access hatch through a ladder. Pilots could reach their ships' platform through overhead catwalks which connected the rack with ready rooms and other hangar facilities. After the pilot entered and activated their ship, the transfer guide advanced the TIE to the front position, where the retaining claw disengaged the fighter, either launching it directly into space, or within the hangar itself; in the latter case, tractor beams would be used to guide the TIE through the hangar's magnetic field and into space instead.

After a TIE returned to the ship, tractor beams would again be used to guide it to another hangar and to waiting receiver-carriers, which moved the TIE to a debarkation station where pilots exited their craft. The TIEs were then moved via the carriers to service and maintenance areas where they were repaired and refueled by astromech droids, before being attached to the receiving end of the transfer guide and cycled back to the system, ready for their next mission.

Text and facts from the “TIE cycling rack” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.