Multinational scrambling?

I say let planes scramble from any airbases anywhere anytime, even land lock airbases.  The defending player still has to make the same choices of where to use his planes to benefit him the most.  Capping it at 6 would be easy to accept and figure out.  Just so long as you make it 1 plane for 1 point of damage on the airbase, so like 5 damage points on an airbase limits it to 1 airplane that can scramble.  You could make exceptions for airbases on capital cities or even for VCs in general, like unlimited scrambling.

Nevermind - the answer is on pg. 16.  Looks like attacking air units can either be chosen to defend against the scramble (i.e. participate in the sea battle), or can ignore the scramble and assist in the amphib assault - but cannot do both.

They only way you would be able to avoid the scramble is to send a sub since the planes cannot target without a destroyer.

You seem to have it all correct. Your planes can not hit the subs because you do not have a destroyer in the battle. Japan may not remove them as a casualty, if you hit with your planes.

The Japanese subs also don’t get to shoot, if all you have fighting in the naval portion of this attack are planes.

Maybe that should be added to the errata?

Uh-huh.

You guess correctly.  Your transports need an escort when amphibiously assaulting an island with an airbase.

@MaherC:

if you have 6 planes on an AB do they all have to scramble or can you hold some back?

Just as with fighter interceptors for SBRs, you may scramble some, all or none of your fighters and tactical bombers from an island airbase.