Mike
The Osprey Oddities 'Advent Calendar' December 2
December 2, 2009 12:00 AM
Where Do We Park The Helicopters?
Despite having three separate aviation series (four if you count Duel) we have never really been able to find a comfortable home for the helicopter. Helicopters couldn't really slip into the Aircraft of the Aces series - are there any helicopter pilots that achieved Ace status? Aviation Elite Units has never embraced the helicopter and of course helicopter on helicopter Duels are relatively rare. So that just leaves the Combat Aircraft series. Which is where we parked two lone helicopters surrounded by a sea of fixed wing aircraft.
Combat Aircraft 41 US Army AH-1 Cobra Units in Vietnam and Combat Aircraft 57 AH-64 Apache Units of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom are surrounded by a good 80 or so fixed wing aircraft - they are really the odd ones out in the series (although they have some of the best cover art in the series in my opinion...although I may be biased as I am a bit of a 'copter fanatic!)
Although both of these helicopters did merit a place in the Combat series, they still felt a little random and out of place. So, after much debate it was decided that we should cover helicopters in the New Vanguard series - where all of our helicopter titles are now going to sit. It is not ideal, but they do fit much more comfortably there. But to this day there remains two lone books in the Combat Aircraft series.
COMMENTS
New Vanguard certainly seems an excellent location for the machines. I've always thought that all aircraft could be given the New Vanguard treatment - which has a different emphasis (and, sadly, page count) from the other Aviation titles.
So I'd encourage the continued publicatation of Helicopter titles in Combat Aircraft with themes along the lines of the two titles above.
Let NVG concentrate on the technical details and the cutaways; let COM run with the units, operational histories and personal stories that the extra page count allows.
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You could always have a asymetrical duel. Helicopter Vs Tank. What is there to say that the Duel series has to be like for like. Combat is never really like that.
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Great shout RossM - I love the idea of a helicopter vs tank Duel! We are already looking into some more 'experimental' Duel titles pitting vastly different machines against each other - so hopefully we can continue in that vein.
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I second tht, great idea!
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