The Black Forest

A parsec was a unit of distance, not time. Solo was not referring directly to his ship's speed when he made this claim. Instead, he was referring to the shorter route he was able to travel by skirting the nearby Maw black hole cluster, thus making the run in under the standard distance. By moving closer to the black holes, Solo managed to cut the distance down to about 11.5 parsecs.

"Kessel" means "kettle" or "cauldron" in German, and is also used to describe a "pocket of encircled military units". The Kessel Run most likely gets its name from the real "Kessel runs" that took place in World War II, during the Soviet counter-offensive in the Battle of Stalingrad. During Operation Uranus, the Soviet army managed to encircle about 250 000 soldiers, primarily Germans and Romanians, outside Stalingrad. To aid the units trapped inside this pocket, the German Luftwaffe tried to create an "air-bridge" to supply the besieged army and evacuate wounded soldiers out of the pocket. However, the relief effort met with disaster, as a lack of available aircraft, heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire and Soviet interceptors made the "Kessel runs" unsuccessful, and the supplies that did make it were often useless.

/wiseguy

The Falcon is often connected to the Kessel Run, a pathway from Kessel past the Maw Black Hole Cluster used by smugglers to transport precious Glitterstim spice. Solo in A New Hope brags that the Falcon made the Kessel Run in "less than twelve parsecs". As this is a unit of distance, not time, different explanations have been provided. In the fourth draft of the script, Kenobi "reacts to Solo’s stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation." In the Expanded Universe, it refers to his ability to move the ship closer to the Maw's black holes and therefore cut the distance traveled. On the A New Hope DVD audio commentary, Lucas comments that, in the Star Wars universe, traveling through hyperspace requires careful navigation to avoid stars, planets, asteroids, and other obstacles, and that since no long-distance journey can be made in a straight line, the "fastest" ship is the one that can plot the "most direct course", thereby traveling the least distance. The novelization backs away and changes the line to "twelve Standard Time Units."