Juan Carlos I Spanish aircraft carrier

This first book in a new series offers a close-up at the operations of the Spanish Navy’s flagship, with Harrier IIs and helicopters landing and taking off from the flight deck, a closer look at the ship itself, including the 4 main decks: the lower deck with the floodable area in the aft, the Hability deck, the Hangar deck and garage and finally the flight deck, with the ski-jump ramp. This book takes you on a tour around the ship, introduces the crew, equipment and of course the jets and helicopters. A visit to Rota, AB, where the flying units are based, is included in this book.

HMH Publications

Presentation

The Duke Hawkins book series started in the summer of 2017 when two friends were looking for a book on the Anglo-French Sepecat Jaguar that combined both action photography and details of the famous fighter jet. Not finding what they wanted, the idea grew to make a book themselves, using the many photos they made over the years and print it digitally in just 2 copies. After doing so and showing it to some friends, orders started coming in and a plan was developped to redo the book professionally and start a series. Three years later, HMH Publications had 16 titles which are distributed all over the world and purchased by aircraft enthusiasts and scale modellers. If all, the books show the passion by the two friends for military aviation, shared by some of the best aviation photographers in the world. In 2020, a second series was started, this time on aircraft carriers. In the near future, more series will be released, although current series will continue to be produced.

Concept

In the Duke Hawkins series, an extensive photographical portrait of military aircraft is given. High quality photos, accompanied by to-the-point explanatory captions show details and capabilities of the aircraft. The books are written in English, have a dynamic design and are filled with photographs exclusively made for the publication. The books are softcover, printed on high quality paper and ranging from 84 to 196 pages. In order to create the most comprehensive books, the authors and photographers visit air bases and museums all around the world.

Authors

The books are edited and written by aircraft historian Robert pied and graphic designer Nicolas Deboeck. Combined, both have designed and edited over 40 aviation related publications for several publishers, among which the Belgian Air Force. For some titles, guest editors are invited, such as Antonio Mayandia (Spain) for the F/A-18 Hornet or Kirill Mushak (Russia) for the Mig-31. Being true aviation enthusiasts, part of the profit of the publications go to aviation related restoration projects, such as Team BD 09, restoring a Mirage 5 BD in Belgium or Navy Wings, rebuilding a deHavilland Sea Vixen in the UK.

Current titles