- "In an instant, everything I cared about was gone."
- ―Jack Archer remembering the Rain of Death[src]
Zentraedi ships blasting the Earth (Robotech: Battlecry)
The Rain of Death, or Zentraedi Holocaust, was an event in April 2011 when the Zentraedi Imperial Grand Fleet, consisting of nearly five million warships, appeared in orbit around the Earth. Commanded by Dolza, Supreme Commander of the Zentraedi, they were ordered to incinerate the planet's surface, which they did. 70% of Earth was utterly destroyed according to the staff at Alaska Base. Dolza initially believed this to be total victory, until a massive energy pulse began to form on Earth's surface. This was the Grand Cannon, a weapon of incredible destructive power that the Zentraedi were unaware of, and it disintegrated a good deal of the armada that was hanging over the Northern Hemisphere. While the Zentraedi were successful in rendering the weapon inoperable before it could fire a second time, the SDF-1 began a counter attack of it's own alongside the renegade Imperial-Class Fleet and Seventh Mechanized Space Division under Khyron, which destroyed the Imperial Grand Fleet.
Legacy[]
The Rain of Death left much of Earth devastated and lay the groundwork for many of Earth's future strife, including the destruction of the SDF-1 by Khyron, the coming of the Robotech Masters, the release of the Flower of Life, and the eventual Invid Invasion.