Rules question in regards to damage

@robbie358:

So my friend posed a good question to me that usually doesn’t come up all that often.

I had 3 carriers with planes on them and wanted to use it to attack his navy.  Being sure that I wasn’t going to have any pieces left after the battle (win by attrition) I chose to take the first few hits on my carriers.  My planes did not have anywhere else to land, but I figured that if I was going to lose them anyways, might as well take the carriers that have no attack value first. 
Can I do that?  Can I send planes into battle knowing that the carriers are going to get trashed?  Can I take the hits on the carriers, and just let the planes crash if they end up surviving?

What if there were two different battles involved?  As in, I attack his fleet with just planes because they could land on a carrier that’s involved in another battle?

To put it simply… can carriers be taken as losses if they are vital to planes being able to land safely?

Yes

@robbie358:

To put it simply… can carriers be taken as losses if they are vital to planes being able to land safely?

As I understand it, you’re allowed to make your attacks as “risky” as you want.  As long as your planes have a landing spot “Assuming you win all battles”, you’re in the clear.

Our group was wondering the same thing and came to the same conclusion.  In the new 1942 game I had a massive multinational allied fleet in SZ 12 including 3 russian subs of all things.  Facing it was a fleet in SZ 14 consisting of a Jap and german battleship/loaded carrier combo along with 6 u-boats.  It was in interesting situation, neither could attack the combined enemy with a divided attack force.  From SZ 14 the axis could hit Moscow  landing on an occupied eastern province with air power or SZ 17,18, 11, 9, 8 with the assumption the fighter(s) would land on a victorious carrier that single handedly destroyed a fleet of 4 CV, 8 FTR, 4 DD, 6 SS, 1 BB and  2 CC.  It meant using a fair bit of capital ship resources to escort straggling/special mission transport fleets or hoping in vain he would trade a ftr and cv for 1 or 2 transports.

I could have used the Yanks earlier to clear the enemy in SZ 14 but early I required a long shuck train starting on the US seaboard, Canada, algeria and across the top of Africa into persia to guarantee control of africa and to overwhelm the 2 german transport shuck operation into Africa.  I had enough fleet to defend, the Japs were trapped and would have put my america to africa shuck out of position.