I'm on the mission where I have to rescue and bring back to the fleet a captured Ralari; however, whenever I show up to rescue Ralari I manage to take out one fighter but before I take out another they succeed in destroying the Ralari. Any thoughts on how I can rescue the Ralari?

This mission, in my opinion, is next to impossible to beat unless you cheat. You basically have about 20-30 seconds to take out all of the fighters and unless you are incredibly amazing and absolutely perfect in your play I'm not sure it can be done. There is additional discussion, on this same mission, on this board, and you'll see many are in agreement with me.

Either the creators didn't want it to be beaten or they failed to give the player adequate time to have a fighting chance. I've taken out 1-3 fighters but have never beaten it without using the Origin -k cheat.

It CAN be done.. it's just a little bit difficult. On the other hand, if you suceed "the winning path" is much shorter. So ignore this failure and proceed..

I'm afraid it simply is almost impossible to do it without cheating. I used to be a real WC1 maniac back in the days and even then I only managed to beat this mission ONCE. I still don't know how I did that; I guess I was extremely lucky with my shooting. But otherwise, it's useless. The same thing that makes a Ralari an easy target for you (laughably low hitpoints), makes it an even harder thing to defend.

I guess you could try using taunts. If (and that's a BIG if - I haven't played the game for a loooooong time, I'm not even sure if it's possible to pull off this level of enemy management) you can divert three, or at least two of the grathas from attacking the destroyer, it should buy you enough time to take out the one or two that ignore your mating calls, and then you can finish off the ones that do turn their attention to you.

The good news is, you don't need to beat this mission. As long as you succeed in the other two sorties with Bossman (rather easy), the game will consider this series of missions a success, even if the Ralari is destroyed.

I managed to do it first try, no cheating. I actually found out afterward that the mission had this reputation for being nearly impossible. I'm no ace (WCII is HARD!), so I guess I just got lucky. I taunt like a bastard, so maybe that helped?

It's possible to beat this mission by following the instructions listed here: lparchive.org/Wing-Commander/Update%2013/