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This is sort of a continuation of an earlier question I posted.

In Revenge of the Sith we see how General Grievous' ship is attacked by clone troopers even though Palpatine, Anakin and Obi-Wan are aboard it. Why would they do that? The forces of the Republic knew for sure that Palpatine was there as they sent Anakin and Obi-Wan to free him, and consequently they could also expect those two to be aboard.

Why would they take the risk of killing the Chancellor and two Jedi? Did General Grievous' ship pose such a threat?

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  • How are they supposed to board the ship if they don't disable/disarm it?
    – phantom42
    Dec 14, 2015 at 14:12
  • You mean the clone troopers? Was it ever the plan for them board the ship? Weren't Anakin and Obi-Wan supposed to take care of that?
    – user35915
    Dec 14, 2015 at 14:15
  • It doesn't matter who. Without disabling/disarming the ship, it's incredibly difficult to get close enough to land and board the ship. Additionally, the Invisible Hand is a powerful capital ship. Using ion cannons to disable it makes perfect sense to stop it from decimating their other ships while palpatine is rescued.
    – phantom42
    Dec 14, 2015 at 14:20
  • @phantom42 The ship was disabled and fell out of orbit well after the Jedi had boarded it.
    – Null ♦
    Dec 14, 2015 at 14:29
  • Did all the forces know that fact? It's possible that it was only distributed among certain personnel so that it stayed a secret that they knew of their enemy's location. (I have no source, just guessing.)
    – Mufasa
    Dec 14, 2015 at 16:03

2 Answers 2

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The Republic Venator-class Star Destroyer that disabled the Invisible Hand was being attacked by it at the time:

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The Invisible Hand managed to severely damage this Star Destroyer, and a number of clone troopers are seen dying. The most reasonable explanation is that the Republic Star Destroyer was merely attempting to defend itself and disable the Separatist gun batteries that were damaging it -- the crew of the Star Destroyer was not trying to destroy the controls of the Invisible Hand and force it to crash on the heavily populated Coruscant.

Also, the crew of this Star Destroyer may not have realized in the chaos of battle that they were attacking the specific ship that had the Chancellor and Jedi on it. The Invisible Hand was not the only Providence-class dreadnought used by the Separatists.

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  • Good point. Grievous even says "Prepare for attack!", so it seem the Republic ships were on the defensive...
    – user35915
    Dec 14, 2015 at 22:39
  • That could be read as "Prepare for (incoming) attack!"
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Jan 3, 2016 at 7:20
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I would imagine the Clone Troopers would attack the ship to keep a majority of the Grievous' crew focused on fighting and defending the ship rather than turning their focus on searching for a small boarding crew.

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