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March 1974, the Vietnam Conflict was still raging and while the USAF, USN & USMC had air superiority over the Vietnamese, the ground war is a different story. Between them they had an impressive line up of strike and bomber aircraft, but since the USAF retired their A-1 Skyraiders two years previously, only the USMC had fixed wing aircraft capable of COIN missions. The USAF needed to fill this gap in their inventory and fill it fast. Rather than go through the lengthy process of commissioning an aircraft from scratch they decided to look a suitable airframes from their inventory that could be adapted or converted for use in this role. The obvious choice was the OV-10 Bronco, all three services were using them to good effect and the airframe had plenty of potential. The main downfalls of the Bronco were it's lack of speed and weapon load, these were the main factors that would have to be addressed if a successful aircraft was to be produced. In 1970 the USMC had trialled the YOV-10D in Vietnam and although the design was eventually changed for the production OV-10D it was of great interest to the USAF as a way forward for their project. Addressing the speed issue, it was decided to dispense with the twin turboprops and install a small turbofan engine on the centreline in place of the cargo hold, this would enable additional wing points to be installed and used for forward firing munitions now there were no props to worry about. The intake for the engine was dorsal mounted to reduce the risk of FOD ingestion and damage from ground fire, this configuration also enabled hot turnarounds without the risk of ground crew being ingested. The YOV-10D had a FLIR turret mounted in a lengthened nose, no side sponsons and a ventral turret mounting a three barrelled 20mm rotary cannon. The USAF decided not to use the turret instead they kept the sponsons but replaced the four 7.62mm guns with two 20mm cannons. It was decided that the aircraft would be single seat only due to the fact that this was successful with the A-1, the additional space achieved through this would be utilised for fuel storage as would the space once occupied by the turboprop engines. All existing OV-10 avionics were moved to the lengthened nose and given protective armour, this would allow the entire avionics pack to be detached and replaced within minutes. The system could then be worked on independent of the airframe, this would greatly reduce the maintenance downtime of each aircraft. The FLIR system would be retained but as a revolutionary "split-system" installation on the front of the two booms., this allowed for greater coverage during maneuvering including inverted flight. The hard point count was increased to 11, while it was not able to carry the same weapon loads as the Skyraider, it was never the less a very capable aircraft. Trials started September 1974, in January 1975 three evaluation aircraft were sent to Vietnam, within weeks it was obvious that this aircraft was what they were looking for. In March 1975 full production was approved and by June operational units began to receive their aircraft. Because the designation A-10 was already in use with Thunderbolt II (in development) the obvious change from OV-10 to A-10 could not be made. Because it had undergone such radical changes it was decide to rename the aircraft completely, and so the A-11A Courser (they wanted to keep the horse reference) was born. Well that's the "little" bit of background info I've come up with. The kit will be Academy's 1/72 OV-10D, I originally bought it just for the props as I need them for my Grumman Goose, I've also robbed it of some rocket pod bits for my AH-1G. This group will save it just sitting in my stash forever and should be fun to build.