I found this on some British website. I like it even better than my own suggestion posted here a while back that the Death Star's weakness was deliberatly placed in there by the Emperor & Vader to prevent the military from using it aginst them (particularly since the weakness is tailored to Darth Vader's skill set - the Force & piloting; the Death Star's command staff seems to have more Force-skeptics & defiant back-talkers than you would think, implying they are fairly thick in the officer corps; an overlooked surviving Jedi taking out the Death Star would reinforce to the norms that they NEED Vader & the Emperor to prevent Jedi freedom fighters from overthrowing the regime; and finally, Darth Vader JUST HAPPENED to have the ONLY known TIE Fighter capable of flying home if anything happened to the Death Star).

I love stuff like this.