The titles for 2025 in the highly successful Combat Aircraft series feature a trio of contrasting types that underline the diversity of the Osprey aviation list. Despite there being more than 150 Combat Aircraft titles in print, the iconic Swordfish and Jaguar are making their series debut, while the all-new B-52 Stratofortress volume will bring Osprey’s coverage of this veteran type right up to date. My personal favourite in the releases for 2025 is the Swordfish book by series debutant, Matthew Willis. One of the world’s leading Fleet Air Arm historians, he has done a thorough job of covering the biplane’s varied service history with both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force in classic Combat Aircraft style.

As with all titles in the long-running series, the trio of books are written with conciseness and authority, include numerous first-hand combat accounts and feature specially commissioned cover artwork and profiles and more than 50 period photographs.

 

RAF Jaguar Units in Combat

By Michael Napier

Illustrated by Gareth Hector (cover) and Janusz Światłoń (profiles)

22/05/2025

Former RAF Tornado pilot Michael Napier chronicles the action-packed history of the RAF Jaguar force, which flew operational missions almost continuously between 1990 and 2003. During this period, aircraft undertook numerous combat missions during the first Gulf War (1991) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1993–95). Units equipped with the jet also completed reconnaissance missions over northern Iraq (1991–2003) and the Balkans (1993–98).

Having covered the Tornado’s RAF operations in two Combat Aircraft volumes, plus a single book on the Harrier GR 7/9, Michael Napier has now turned his attention to the Jaguar strike aircraft, and the pilots that flew the Anglo-French aircraft into combat. Using his extensive Service contacts, supported by both official and personal photographs and 22 specially commissioned profile artworks illustrating the wide range of colours worn and ordnance employed by the Jaguar, this book adds to Osprey’s growing library of modern Combat Aircraft titles.

 

Swordfish Units of World War 2

By Matthew Willis

Illustrated by Gareth Hector (cover) and Janusz Światłoń (profiles)

17/07/2025

This book details how, despite being obsolete on paper, the Swordfish was used to undertake reconnaissance, gunnery spotting and torpedo attacks against enemy fleets, as well as carrying out anti-submarine patrols for the Royal Navy. Amongst the type’s more memorable operations were the famously creative and daring raid on the Italian battle fleet at Taranto in November 1940 and the attacks on the German battleship Bismarck in appalling weather in May 1941. Less successful was the tragic attempt to repeat the feat against the capital ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the English Channel in February 1942. Matt Willis will also details how the Swordfish gained a second career in the anti-submarine role in the Battle of the Atlantic and on Arctic convoys, protecting merchant ships from the U-boat menace in often horrendous conditions. Finally, the book chronicles how even the RAF used this antiquated machine for anti-shipping work during the D-Day landings at Normandy and during the final stages of the European war.

 

B-52 Stratofortress Units in Combat 1992–2025

By Peter E. Davies

Illustrated by Gareth Hector (cover) and Jim Laurier (profiles)

25/09/2025

The third volume in the Combat Aircraft series to detail the operational history of the USAF’s veteran B-52 Stratofortress, this book examines the type’s participation in a handful of conflicts since Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Veteran series author Peter E. Davies highlights the bomber’s commitment to campaigns in the Middle East, the Balkans and Afghanistan, with first-hand accounts from the crews involved adding an immediacy to his text. The encyclopaedic range of ordnance and target sensors available to the B-52 force are also detailed, as is the upgrade programme that will keep the aircraft in the frontline until 2050. The book is illustrated by more than 50 photographs from both official and private sources and 22 brand new profiles.