The Tantive V functioned as a CR90 corvette serving the Rebel Alliance throughout the Galactic Civil War. Shortly before the Battle of Yavin, the Tantive V served as a diversionary tactic for the Rebel corvette that was its near-identical twin, the Tantive IV. The Tantive IV was the consular vessel used by Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, and it transported the stolen technical data related to the Galactic Empire's Death Star battle station.
The Tantive V successfully lured Darth Vader's Imperial Star Destroyer, known as the Devastator, away from the Tantive IV, thereby granting Organa additional time to flee with the plans for the Death Star. The Devastator, under the mistaken impression that the Tantive V was Princess Leia's ship, proceeded to capture and board the decoy vessel. However, instead of finding the coveted Death Star plans, they discovered an unarmed crew consisting of Gungans. Thanks to the Tantive V's deception, Organa managed to briefly evade Vader's pursuit while carrying the Death Star schematics.
Serving as a blockade runner for the Rebel Alliance Fleet, the CR90 corvette called Tantive V was manufactured by the Corellian Engineering Corporation. Boasting a length of 150 meters, the Tantive V was virtually indistinguishable from its vessel counterpart, the Rebel corvette Tantive IV. It was armed with turbolaser cannons and possessed a sophisticated drive system.
The Tantive V took part in the Rebel Alliance's campaign to acquire the stolen technical readouts for the Galactic Empire's first Death Star battle station during the Galactic Civil War. After the Rebels successfully capturing and transmitting the Death Star data to Princess Leia Organa on board the Alderaanian consular ship Tantive IV, Organa started rushing back to the planet Alderaan with the goal of ensuring the safe acquisition of the stolen data. However, Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith commanding the Imperial-class Star Destroyer _Devastator](/article/devastator-legends), gave chase to the Rebel corvette in an effort to capture Organa and retrieve the stolen plans.
Because it looked just like Organa's Tantive IV, the Tantive V served as the ideal distraction to delay the Devastator as it pursued. The Devastator was led into pursuing the Tantive V, which was only manned by a group of unarmed Gungans, pulling it away from the Tantive IV and giving Vader's real target a chance to momentarily escape with the plans. This bought time. The Devastator was unaware of the ruse and used a tractor beam to capture the Tantive V before pulling the neutralized vessel into its main docking bay. Vader himself led a stormtrooper force in preparation to board the corvette.
When Vader's stormtroopers had secured each of the Tantive V's hatches and were jury-rigging the corvette's main hatch open, the Rebel counterattack started. A hooded figure, who was actually the Gungan Abso Bar Binks, the son of former Imperial Senator Jar Jar Binks, who had been given the personal assignment of stalling Vader, threw two small boomas into the Devastator from within the Tantive V's breached hatch. This resulted in an explosion and an effective smokescreen among the stormtroopers.
Amidst the resulting chaos, Binks slipped through the hatchway and into the Devastator, where he started attacking the confused stormtroopers. The stormtroopers were afraid to shoot at the hooded figure because they thought it might be Organa, whom they would rather capture than kill. Vader quickly instructed his stormtroopers to board the Tantive V and bring him the Death Star plans when he finally learned who the hooded attacker was and how incompetent he was. The stormtroopers soon informed Vader, however, that the information they were looking for was not on board the Tantive V and that all they had discovered was the corvette's unarmed Gungan crew.
Binks then revealed the deception to Vader: The Tantive V had been a diversion the whole time, and he had created the opportunity that Organa and the Tantive IV needed to escape on his own. The stormtroopers threw Binks back onto the Tantive V, but Vader chose not to order the Gungans' deaths because he thought they were too insignificant to waste blasterfire on.
The Devastator released the Tantive V back into space and kept chasing Organa. Despite the Tantive V's best efforts, the Devastator caught up to the Tantive IV and captured it over the planet Tatooine an hour later. Vader was unable to recover the Death Star plans, which ultimately caused the battlestation to be destroyed at the Battle of Yavin.
The Tantive V was crewed by a group of unarmed Gungans, including Abso Bar Binks, the Rebel son of Jar Jar Binks, during the operation to delay Darth Vader's pursuit of Princess Leia Organa aboard the Tantive IV. Binks and the other Gungans were successful in tricking the Devastator's crew into thinking the Tantive V was carrying the princess along with the stolen Death Star plans.
In the illustrated story Tantive IV, which was created by the artist Formalin and released by Tokyopop in the comic book Star Wars Manga: Black trade paperback in October 2006, the Tantive V made an appearance. Within the Star Wars Legends continuity, all of the stories featured in Star Wars Manga: Black were regarded as non-canon.