Why Is It Called the B-Wing? The Real Reason Behind the Name

If you’ve ever looked at a B-Wing starfighter and thought, “Wait, how does that look like a ‘B’?”, you’re not alone. A-Wings, X-Wings, and Y-Wings all have designs that sort of match their names. But the B-Wing? That one feels like a mystery.

Turns out, the real story behind the B-Wing’s name has nothing to do with its shape—and everything to do with how it was labeled behind the scenes.

It All Started With Production Labels

When the team at Industrial Light & Magic was designing new ships for Return of the Jedi, they came up with two brand-new Rebel starfighters. To keep things simple, they just called them the “A fighter” and the “B fighter.” These names were placeholders during early development, not based on appearance.

But as the ships took shape and the production moved forward, those working titles stuck. The “A fighter” became the A-Wing, and the “B fighter” became the B-Wing, even though the B-Wing’s final design didn’t resemble the letter B at all.

The “Bill-Wing” Nickname

Another reason the “B” might have felt fitting was because of Bill George, one of the designers who played a major role in shaping the B-Wing’s final look. He worked so closely on the ship that people on the team started jokingly calling it the “Bill-Wing.” It wasn’t official, but the nickname helped the “B-Wing” label stick around during development.

This bit of behind-the-scenes trivia also came from Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop, highlighting how much Bill George influenced the final look of the ship.

The Blade Wing Backstory

Years after the original trilogy, the B-Wing got an in-universe explanation for its name. In Star Wars Rebels, the ship was introduced under a different name: the Blade Wing. The idea was that the long, vertical shape—with its rotating cockpit and extended S-foils—looked like a blade when in attack mode.

In the episode Wings of the Master, fans were shown the prototype B-Wing being developed by the Mon Calamari engineer Quarrie, who specifically called it the Blade Wing.

This version of the name, which had appeared earlier in Legends content, was canonized by the Rebels production team and confirmed in Rebels Recon #2.11 (from 3:50 of the video below).

But What About the Shape?

Some fans like to think the B-Wing kind of looks like a lowercase “b” if you tilt your head the right way. The idea is that when the cockpit is positioned at the bottom and the wings are aligned vertically, it forms something that resembles the letter. Others have suggested tracing arcs from the wing tips to the fuselage, creating the shape of a capital B from above.

These theories are fun to think about, but there’s no record of anyone on the production team naming the ship based on its shape. It’s more of a retroactive explanation from fans looking to connect the dots.

Bonus

Because the name didn’t match the design as clearly as the X-Wing or Y-Wing, the B-Wing has picked up a lot of fan nicknames over the years. Some call it the “Best-Wing,” others say it stands for “Badass Wing,” and a few jokingly call it the “Bitchin’ Wing.” There’s even a post that says the “B” stands for “Boeing.”

None of those are real, of course, but they show just how confusing (and iconic) this oddly named ship has become.