I don't get it. Academy is NOT cannon. It's a jumble of Wc1, Wc2, and Wc3 written as a Saturday Morning cartoon. The Tiger's Claw has only the main landing strip plus two launch bays , and no Hellcats flew off of it. We should disregard it completely. I will complement you though, this is a first-rate model.
What the hell are you talking about?
First, lets get it out of the way: if you're too stupid to spell a word or know what it means then you shouldn't be using it. A cannon is a projectile weapon, or more esoterically a verb meaning to use such a weapon. The word you're mindlessly fumbling around for is "canon" (with one n).
I'm always left mouth-agape at this particular gaffe (you've all seen the hilarious photograph from last year). People use only use this word in the context of science fiction in a sort of pseudo-highbrow sense... so when you mess it up it's just... even more awful. Like a thirteen year old repeating some horrible SAT word without looking it up. Is there actually a faction of idiots out there who think officiality has something to do with artillery?
It's actually a religious word: elements of texts the church considers real are said to be part of the 'canon'... those that are not are 'apocryphal'. At some point in the distant past (ie, perhaps the 1970s) a Star Trek fan decided it'd be funny to apply it to the dividing line between what a company considers an 'official' story and an 'unofficial' one. That is to say, it's a word joke that everyone takes seriously now.
Now, it means the same thing in our context as it does in its proper religious meaning -- what the church considers holy is canon, what the *license holder* considers official is canon.
Here's the rub: you're not the church, so the particular brand of rant you chose here is juvenile and ill-informed. No one in this thread has any right to decide what is and is not "canon". Because you wanted some kind of special catch all, intellectual word you managed to attack the single most well armored part of the dreadnaught: because no matter how ridiculous something is it's still "canon" if Electronic Arts says so.
... and they do say so, Mr. Gerald. Elements of Academy are referenced in later works -- particularly, numerous references in the Wing Commander novelization, in the Wing Commander Prophecy official guide and in the Terran Confederation Handbook.
So lets address what you mean instead of what you said: *should* Wing Commander Academy be 'canon'? Well, I'll argue yes... and unless you'd care to expound on your point (perhaps using your own vocabulary this time?), I'll be the only one able to cite facts.
Of any major Wing Commander product, Academy is the one that did the *most* research to get the visual elements 'right'. The Tiger's Claw is brought back several times (in SWC, in the movie and in Academy)... and Academy is the *only* one that bothered to bring back the original look -- it's also the only follow up series that remembered the right ships for the era... Scimitars, Dorkirs, Salthi, Dralthi and so forth. Heck, the entire series is based on something so obscure as the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide (from 1991)! Academy is *alive* with continuity. It's an amazing amazing show in this regard -- it used the original Wing Commander visual elements for a mass marketing, mass media show in an era when the popular and well known Wing Commanders were WC3 and WC4. It's *amazing*.
(And heck, even your supposed facts about Wing Commander I alone are wrong -- the original game launches its fighters out of launch tubes, not bays. You run by a sign that points to "TUBES 6-9" and then shoot out a fighter sized trapzeoid tube (that has no external runway to speak of).
