BIG BOYZ TOYZ
Where can I buy one?
Who else uses them?
Going through this list, you can see just how
popular and versatile the Gazelle is:
■ National Air Force of Angola operates
seven aircraft;
■ Montenegro Air Defence has 11 Gazelles
and the police have three;
■ Royal Moroccan Air Force operates 24
aircraft;
■ Air Force and Anti-Aircraft of Bosnia and
Herzegovina operate four (Republica Srpska
Police also has four);
■ Serbian Air Force operates 61 Gazelles
while the police have 13 aircraft;
■ Burundi Army Aviation operates two
aircraft;
■ Cameroon Air Force operates eight
Gazelles (they ordered nine but one
crashed);
■ Cypriot National Guard’s Air Component
has four;
■ Ecuadorian Army operates about 20
Gazelles;
■ Egyptian Air Force has over 84 aircraft;
■ Gabon Air Force has five;
■ Guinea Air Force has one Gazelle;
■ Iraqi Air Force has about six aircraft (Iraq
bought a number of Gazelles equipped with
HOT missiles in the 1970s and 1980s which
were used heavily during the Iran-Iraq war
but saw little use during the Gulf war due to
Allied air supremacy);
■ Syrian Air Force operates 38 aircraft
(these were used during the 1982 Lebanon
War – the Syrian Army claimed they had
large success against Israeli armour with
77 kills, while suffering just two losses.
One was captured by Israeli forces, which
was tested and is now on display in the IAF
museum);
■ And the United Arab Emirates Air Force
has one.
There are more, but these are the main
users of the Gazelle.
Obviously, purchasing, owning and running
a helicopter is a costly hobby! If you want
to fly it yourself, first thing to do is to get
your helicopter pilot’s licence. Once that box
has been ticked and you have some funds
available, here are the options.
There are plenty of civilian versions
available. Even some of the stretched versions
are for sale. Expect to pay somewhere
between £320,000-£340,000 (+VAT) for one
of these. I also found some earlier standardlength versions for sale which started at just
£165,000… Bargain!
Check out www.gazellehelicopters.co.uk
and www.ldhelicopters.co.uk.
But we airsofters don’t want civvy version
with all the niceties, we want the hardcore
military-spec versions! Well as luck would
have it Withams, the well-known military
kit disposal people, has (or had) 30 for
sale! You can buy individually for between
£75,000-£175,000 or buy the job lot for a cool
£2,000,000!
Look them up on www.mod-sales.com.
I really enjoyed researching and writing
this article. During my time in the tanks we
quite often had Gazelles acting as forward
observers and, occasion