The biggest change I see from the previous version of AA I have been playing, which is the Spring '42 version, is that the bombers themselves get to participate in the pre-bombing battle.  In Spring 1942, only the fighters get to participate.  No bombers get to attack.  They can only be casualties if all the attacking fighter escorts are destroyed.  The escort rules were optional in Spring '42, but we always played them.

I think the bombers getting to battle is even a bigger reason that I’d be careful using defending escort fighters.

I’m about to start my first game of Pacific 1940, and I’m a little confused about the escort rules for the bombing raids.

The rules seem to imply that all bombers (strategic and tactical) get to participate in the single round of special combat with the fighters in the air battle prior to the bombing.  Is this correct?  So if I have 1 tactical bomber, 1 strategic bomber, 1 attacker fighter escort on the bombing raid, and the defender has 1 interceptor fighter, the attacker would get to roll 3 dice in the special combat, and the defender would get to roll 1 die, correct?  Any rolls of a 1 on either side would result in a casualty.

@Krieghund:

Escorting fighters are subject to AA fire, whether or not there are any interceptors.

That’s what I thought … thanks!

@Krieghund:

You guys are taking game events way too literally.  A game turn unfolds over a few months of “real” time.  Moving a fighter to a sea zone where a new carrier will be mobilized and then landing on it simply represents redeploying existing aircraft to a new carrier.  In game mechanics terms, it also allows the new carrier to not be defenseless for an entire round.

I agree with you completely on this … I was just trying to make sure I interpretted the rules correctly.

I guess this leads to the next question, which is, can a plane take off and make a non-combat move (from land) to land on a CV that will be placed during the mobilization phase?

I’ve got another question that came up during our recent game.  If I have fighters escort bombers on a strategic bombing raid, do enemy anti aircraft get to fire at the fighters in addition to the bombers?  What if there are no fighters defending the strategic bombing?

The case occurs because the attacker declares how many fighters are escorting first, then the defender declares how many fighters are defending.  If the defender says “0”, I wasn’t sure if the AA would get to fire at the escort fighters.

@dedo:

Kriegshund knows his rules (Rulebook, page 26 confirms)
But, at the risk of doing blasphemy :wink:: I’m always wondering a little bit about this line of argumentation. In my understanding, the fighter should not be allowed to land on a carrier mobilized in the mobilization phase. The “eligible landing space” should fit to “…the end of the NCM phase”. In my opinion, the fighter should land at the end of the NCM. At that special point of the turn within the NCM there should be an eligible landing space. A fighter should not be allowed to “land” in the mobilization phase, because landing is the final part of moving and moving ends at the end of the NCM. In the example stated above, the fighter could only land on water at the end of the NCM… when the CV is yet layed on keel in the shipyard.

Yeah, I kind of agree with what you are saying above.  My thought would be that the only time you would be allowed to land on a CV that was placed during the mobilization phase would be if that was your only possible landing spot, which is referenced somewhere else in the rulebook.  The case I was detailing was I was able to land in another location, but the mobilized CV was also available.  In my case, it was more advantageous to land on the CV, as my fleet was more vulnerable.

@wittmann:

Afternoon SeismicAssault.
You were both right to not remove the Transports.
The attacker has to have a unit left to hit the Transports and he did not.

Thanks!  I was pretty sure that’s the way it went, but wanted to make sure.

Thanks for the answers … I guess I didn’t realize I hadn’t posted here before.  Used to play A&A back in the late 80’s, then my son bought Spring 1942 recently, and now it seems like we’ve got a game going all the time.

I’ve got another rules question that came up during our game … if all the non-transport ships are destroyed simultaneously during a round of combat, do the transports survive?  The case we had is that a cruiser and two transports were attacked by a single cruiser.  Both cruisers rolled hits, so they were removed as casualties.  We deemed that the transports survived … thoughts?

I’ve got a game going where we had a rules question on landing fighters on an aircraft carrier that was purchased and will be deployed during the mobilization phase.

It is UK’s turn, and they purchased an aircraft carrier this turn.  A fighter leaves from UK, attacks Western Europe, and survives the combat.  The fighter can land back in UK, but can I also have it land on the carrier that will be deployed in the mobilization phase in SZ7?

We decided that this was allowable, but the rules seemed non-definitive on this.  One rule says that a fighter must land during the non-combat movement phase (which is before deployment).  Under Non-combat movement, it says that “You must have a carrier … be placed to pick up a fighter that would end it’s non-combat move in a sea zone”.  So if during non-combat movement, I declare the fighter will return to SZ7 (where the carrier will be), it can land on it.