Throughout the Clone Wars, many brave men sacrificed their lives against the hordes of separatist droid forces in order to protect the Republic. Some of these incredibly loyal men however were never Given the same recognition throughout the Republic as others, despite performing roles that were just as important.

The Clone Combat Engineers, or just Clone Engineers as they were called by Republic officials, were Clone Troopers that were specifically trained and educated on engineering techniques for repairing vehicles, structure demolition and of course keeping weapons systems operational. These Clone Engineers were often placed into special Combat Engineer Battalion in the Grand Army of the Republic, where they could work together to serve the needs of the front line infantry.

During the standard training programs under the Mandalorian trainers on Kamino, some Clones were pulled from their classes at random, and chosen to join a combat engineer Battalion. This mentally destroyed many Clone Engineers, as they were ripped away from brothers who they had formed Close Relationships with and learned to work effectively with in combat. On top of this, many Clones likely dreaded being selected for the Role because of it’s much higher death rate than standard Grand Army jobs, or because it was far removed from what they were born and bred to do.

Once chosen for this role, the new engineers would be placed into a separate training space, where they would learn and have to demonstrate that they knew how to fix almost every front line vehicle used by Republic forces, in a very short period of time. After they had shown that they were capable of performing these repairs in a quick amount of time, and under intense amounts of stress, the Clone Engineers would finally graduate from the training system on Kamino, and be placed into a heavy artillery unit on the front lines of the Clone Wars. The engineers were very often stationed in Juggernaut Clone Turbo Tanks, so next time you watch Revenge of the Sith, just think about the brave sacrifice of the Engineers inside of this tank.

Once placed on the front lines of battle, the Clone Engineers were equipped with a large array of dispensers which held bacta, for medical purposes and also incredibly massive boxes of ammunition, to keep Republic advances moving forward at all times. In addition to this, they were each given a par of F-187 fusion cutters, which was the primary tool used in repairing Republic combat vehicles, but was also essential in fixing broken turrets, medical droids and power droids. Finally, each frontline Clone engineer was outfitted with standard issue blaster shotguns, as a last line of defence against advancing separatist forces and as well as a small amount of detonation packs.

During the Phase 1 stage of the Clone Troopers, the Grand Army of the Republic began to run so short on Clone Engineers that they began to pull pilots out of their own Squadrons and repurpose them to serve in the vital engineering role. These repurposed Clone pilots could do many of the same jobs as the other Engineers, but of course, because they didn’t undergo specialized engineer training, they were more limited in their ability to repair and fix things.

The Clone Engineers were stationed inside many legions, including the 501st and played a crucial role at the Battle of Thule, where they were deployed directly into separatist energy farms, to hack and take down their shield systems, leaving them vulnerable to attack. Every Republic outpost across the Galaxy, was also set up by the Clone Engineers.

The only named Clone Engineer that we know of so far is a Clone Sergeant, named Gaffa. I’m sure you can guess why his name is Gaffa. Trooper Gaffa served in the 38th armored division of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his combat Engineer Battalion. Gaffa unfortunately served in one of the darkest periods of the Conflict, alongside General Obi-Wan Kenobi and Commander Ahsoka Tano, in an intense space battle against droid forces. Unfortunately, the Republic very quickly lost the battle and were quickly forced to flee, with the droids badly damaging their ship.

Awesomely however, Gaffa and the 38th were able to convert their A5-RX battle tank on board into a makeshift battle platform, which they used to repel the droids boarding the ship, and escape, to fight another day.

So that is the hard life of the Clone Combat Engineers. Thanks so much for watching, really hope you enjoyed the video. Cheers guys, hope to see you in the next one!

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