4 transports loaded attacking area with airfield. No other ships. He is bringing aircraft with him. Do they get to defend against scrambling aircraft or are they only be used for the land battle only?
Depends. You can either allocate them to the sea or the land.
1. You decide what planes are going where (to the sea zone or territory).
2. They decide what to scramble.
So the planes can “patrol” the sea zone in case of scramble?
Yes, “patrol” is a good way of putting it.
You can always bring as many naval units and aircraft to a potential SZ where an enemy may or may not scramble. In the case of a seaborne invasion, you can bring additional naval units that are not shore bombarding(i.e. AC’s, DD’s and even subs if the enemy has a DD in the SZ) along as well to be used in the defense of your other naval units, air units and transports.
Yay! I was the player who attempted to bring the planes. It was… controversial… in our group so we decided to not make the move to move the game along. It seems in the spirit of the rules, if not in RAW, that you can protect transports with planes… just like you would with non-bombarding surface warships… I have a feeling this issue will still not be decided unless Krieg weighs in…
In my opponents defense it did look fishy. It was 4 german transports with no other ships conducting an amphibious assault on empty Archangel and Nenetsia from empty SZ127. There were 3 Russian Fighters in Novgorod that could scramble to auto kill the transports before they landed. So the German player brought up 8 planes to SZ127 to protect against the inevitable scramble and they would land in Axis Finland. It was an odd move and looked silly with no surface warships and just planes, something that our group isn’t used to seeing, but it seemed no different in terms of the rules than sending destroyers up to the SZ to protect them…
Zallomallo is right.
You/your group can wait for Krieg to make an official ruling if you like but I guarantee this is backed up by the rules. Like I said, in addition to planes, you can bring as many other naval units as you like to defend your transports. You could even bring S. Bmbr’s if you want. Not suggested but you could do it.
S. bombers are better than being automatically sunk! :-D Thank you to everybody for the replies, didn’t meant to doubt you, I just have a skeptical crew, and they were very set against us doing this move at the time.
Actually, if your attacking transports are confronted by scrambled fighters (if you had no other attacking units), then your transports wouldn’t be automatically sunk. They would have to retreat to SZ 126 with all the land forces STILL ON THEM. You can’t discharge any ground troops from transports in a retreat.
Then, on Russia’s turn, they could send those fighters from Leningrad out, or even just 1 of them, and you would lose all those German transports and all the ground troops on them. That really sucks.
You/your group can wait for Krieg to make an official ruling if you like but I guarantee this is backed up by the rules.
This is covered in the Official Rules Clarifications.
Actually, if your attacking transports are confronted by scrambled fighters (if you had no other attacking units), then your transports wouldn’t be automatically sunk. They would have to retreat to SZ 126 with all the land forces STILL ON THEM.
Yes, but the scrambled planes would get one round of fire against the transports before they could retreat.
