Yesterday I played Dragon valley in the heli on chinese sidewhile in a 6 man squad. I had choppy graphics the whole round, but because the chopper was abandoned i used it anway. My mission was to stick with my squad as a unit. When I got a gunner (Rico - really great job on his part) things really tookk off.

Our squad was retaking the first base, but failing. We got it back when we in the chopper were able to mow down infantry at the flag while our squad moved in.

Then the squad moved to the southwest flag, the one with all the chimneys. Here i would circle around, facing the fixed AA. A few times, the flag was turned, but the squadleader managed to stay alive, while we in the chopper were killing infantry on the flag, and distracting most enemies. Then the squad would respawn and retake the flag.

When there was nothing to do the squadleader would give me orders to assist another squad that was attacking the north west base and facing heavy resistance. After a few tries, they got the flag back while we killed 5 to 15 infantry around the flag.

I think our chopper did not only kill 60 enemies, we also assisted our squad decisively in defending a flag, and another squad too.

Now the opposing chopper was probably not one of the best, and I am usually raped by the TG pilots in chopper vs chopper fight. But a few times in that, we were engaging the enemmy chopper (only because it attacked us; i was sticking with my squad) and it suddenly blew up, shot by an igla or something else. Now when it happened i thought lucky me. But now i think it wasn't maybe all luck. Since I was sticking with my squad, there were always some guns on the ground that could assist me in the air to air combat if they weren't under attack.

I had been trying this on our own clanserver for sometime. Yesterday it was a great succes, even though i can never fly a chopper without choppy gfx on TG because of the transatlantic lag.

This leads me to conclude that having a chopper in a squad might well be more useful when done right then having a seperate chopper squad.
The chopper can still be called on to assist other squads via the sl and commander and it is more closely involved in the battle through direct communication with 4 ground troops.

A good example of the communication advantage was when the squad was being hit by snipers from different directions. The squad had spotted the snipers on the minimap, but that area of the map (sw flag) has big differences in elevation. At that moment I was flying in from the base, and asked to describe exactly where the snipers were located. We took out one sniper on a ridge, while the squad killed another.