The shuttle was a small craft used to transport personnel, usually at least partially through space. While some shuttle types were designed only to carry people from a planet's orbit to its surface, other types were used to transport its crew from a ship to another larger located nearby (for example to a Star Destroyer), or to a space station (Death Star). However, many shuttles were fitted with their own hyperdrives and were able to travel great distances, even jumping in hyperspace. The shuttles were popular military dropships, too, these military spacecrafts used for the collection or delivery of troops, and these vehicles were usually referred to as "troop shuttles" or "troop transports". Many different types of shuttles existed in the Star wars movies and computer games, these were often named after the letters of the Greek alphabet.


The Lambda-class T-4a shuttle was a standard light utility craft in common use throughout the Imperial military as a transport for troops and high-ranking individuals. So the Lambda T-4a was reasonably well-armed, with three double blaster cannons (one rear-mounted) and two double laser cannons. A military version built by Cygnus Spaceworks was armed with ten laser cannons especially for military use. This dropship was also protected by a powerful deflector shield. The Lambda-class shuttle is named after the letter Lambda of the Greek alphabet because of its resemblance in shape. When in flight position, the three wing configuration resembled an inverted Y. When landing, the lower two wings were folded upwards.

While the Lambda-class shuttle is named after the shape of the letter Lambda, the Kappa-class shuttle bears no resemblance to the shape of the Greek letter Kappa. The Kappa-class had an angled cockpit area with wide viewport, a ventral debarkation hatch, and three stubby stabilization fins. It was designed to transport troops directly into a hot landing zone. Its blaster cannons protected the shuttle during flight, while its repeating blaster cannons cleared its designated landing area of any enemy forces, allowing the shuttle to establish a safe zone for its carried platoon to disembark stationing in its hold.
But the cargo hold of the Kappa shuttles weren't only had infantry units! The Kappa-class shuttle featured an aft vehicle bay containing two AT-PT walkers. Port and starboard exit hatches from the vehicle bay allowed the AT-PTs to disembark over low ramps. The AT-PTs provided heavy firepower and armor support to ground troops landing in a combat zone. The game Star Wars: Force Commander models this situation, too. It has a constant interior size, and you can load in several kinds of units into it till there is enough free space for the next unit. So if you (let's say) have 12 unit free space, in your shuttle, and you load in a dewback trooper who needs 4 unit, you'll have 8 free units left. If you send in two AT-PT walkers, which need 2 places each, all together 4 free place, you'll have four more left, which you can fill up either with an other dewback trooper, or two strormtroopers, who need only 2 free place each. Besides these three standard units the shuttle can transport imperial speeder bikes, a few mobile artilleries (anti-infantry antigravitation artillery platforms). There is no shuttle type which could transport AT-ST-s, AT-AA-s, or AT-AT four legged walkers, the robust imperial barges transport these heavy machinery to the target area.

We could first see the ancestor of the shuttle in the Revenge of the Sith movie, when Chancellor Palpatine travelled to Mustafar to save Darth Vader, and he brought back his burned, stumped apprentice to Coruscant. This was the ancestor of the later Theta-class T-2c shuttles, which were tri-winged personnel transport crafts, most often used by influential senators, officers, and courtiers to travel between planets and starships.

In the order of the attendance of the film episodes we could see an imperial landing shuttle in the New Hope, it was an Sentinel-class shuttle. We could see that Sentinel-class landing ship lifting off in the background when some Imperial stormtroopers investigated the escape pod landing site in the Tatooine desert, searching the stolen data, the plans of the Death Star, and the missing droids. Here is the screenshot of that very film scene, and a picture of the Sentinel class shuttle schematics which depicts the design of the Sentinel class shuttle meticulously.

After the declaration of the Galactic Empire the shuttle found itself used by key Imperial officials including Darth Vader and even Emperor Palpatine himself. Darth Vader used this kind of vehicle after leaving Bespin to get back his Star Destroyer waiting for him in the space as was seen in the Empire strikes back, and he travelled to the Second Death Star by a shuttle, too, to force Moff Jerjerrod double his efforts during the constructions of the Second Death Star as was seen in the Return of the Jedi. Later on, in this same episode arrived the Emperor with a same shuttle to the Death Star, however he was much more escorted and protected by various imperial fighters and destroyers, but mostly by dozens of tie fighters. The nose of the vehicle can be opened, like the lower bill of a bird, and this "mandible" will provide a comfortable exit ramp for the Emperor, his imperial dignitaries, and of course for his red royal guards to easily walk out of the shuttle.

When Luke Skywalker surrendered, and was taken in front of his father on Endor, he was also transported up to the 2nd Death Star in front of the Emperor after Luke failed to turn back his father to the Light Side. But not only the imperials used this shuttles in the films, the Lambda-class shuttle "Tydirium" was captured by the Alliance and used to insert Han Solo, Leia, Chewbacca, Luke, R2-D2, C3-PO and a small rebel strike team on the forest moon of Endor to get closer to the well-protected shield generator, what they planned to blow up to disable the shield of the 2nd Death Star.

We could see these very cool designed spaceships in the PC games, too. They have a minor role in X-wing Alliance, they function as a transport vehicle and a moving command post in Battlefront 2, where they can fire and they have a deflector shield, but it is quite slow comparing it to the other fighters and bombers, but anyway, you can at least "sit in it" you can pilot it, you can feel it in your hands, and you can hear the sounds of its engine, which is a good thing! In our imperial hangar there is a Theta-class shuttle, which is able to transport your character and five fellow imperial pilots or sandtroopers into the hangar bay of the enemy rebel frigate, and such a six member elite infiltrator team can make a really big mess inside an enemy cruiser! And additionally as an extra surprise mission, a shuttle will transport you as a member of a 100 men squad, and a young, in that time not so famous bounty hunter, Boba Fett to the oceanic planet of Kamino, where the Kamino cloners trained a new generation of clone troopers to fight back the evil Galactic Empire, and dared to challenge the mighty Empire. Officially "there was NO kaminoan clone rebellion", but the Empire crushed the rebel clones on Kamino without mercy, and acquired the clone DNA from the cloners, preventing such a situation happen again. On the next screenshot you can see that stormtrooper, who has the DNA jar hanging on his belt, the fellow imperial soldiers cover them, till he safely reach back to the imperial shuttle. This mission can be played in the Battlefront 2 campaign. The shuttles have a much more strategic importance in the game Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds! You can use this great shuttle for multiple purposes in that superb strategy game! Sometimes you'll find a holocron in a clearing surrounded by a forest, so you won't be able to get it on foot, just with a transport ship, so this is clear, the first player, who'll have a shuttle sends a Jedi in it immediately, transport him above that clearing, disembarks the Jedi who'll get that holocron at once, reload him into the shuttle, bring him back to your Jedi temple in your city, so you could put it in your Jedi archives! The same way you can collect nerfs from surrounded places, and banthas, too, and bringing them back to your town, loading them into an animal nursery you'll get a nice amount of constant food to your stocks! However you will have to change the air in that shuttle after those stinky animals, I think... :-) Also, you can use your shuttles to deliver your troops behind enemy walls, if the AI or your opponent built wall around his base, you can transport your invasion forces behind the walls, so you won't have to siege his walls, you'll be able to battle them at once in his nest! Also, a Lambda shuttle has appeared in the game mod KotF, where you can fly around in it, as it can be seen in the following screenshot.

There are two kinds of shuttles in the game Force Commander, first is a dropship, a landing ship, which brings us supplies and reinforcements from the orbiting Star destroyers, these ships can be used ONLY for ordering new units, but later, we can buy an own Lambda ferry shuttle for 350 command points, which can transport 6 infantry units to the destination very fast, but none of these game shuttles have deflector shields, or defensive weaponry on board, so we need to protect them with tie fighters, or with AT-AA walkers!

Interestingly there are female pilots amongst these space shuttles, there are very few female cadets among the imperial pilots and drivers, but these shuttles fortunately have! This is why I decided to handmake a custom female shuttle pilot figure for myself. She has long boots reaching up almost her knees, a slimmed female type of an imperial uniform, which she ties with a female belt variant. She is interesting for me, and not only because she is a woman, but also because of her morose comments, and a bit apathetic voice. Such a shuttle figure would look great in an impose Imperial shuttle toy vehicle's cockpit, which could be a perfect base of a fan made diorama, which could be built to illustrate the arrival of the Emperor, as there would stand squads of stormtroopers, imperial officers, waiting for their grand superior, Vader would kneel down on the ground as his Master arrived, escorted by his royal guards. That would be a superb scene, if we have enough space in our room, and the proper amount of money in our account, of course...