General Rules Question

The only thing that changed is that no Bombard attack may be used if there is sea combat.  Note that scrambling one aircraft can trigger the “sea combat” event, and all the heavy ships lose their option to Bombard since they had to deal with the fighter.

What is mentioned on page 15 is if the sea zone has been cleared of defending enemy warships (i.e. destroyed them all) and the attacker still has land units committed to the coastal territory (i.e. in the rare case where the defender will get enough hits to take out all of your warships and still have hits left, in which case they will have to be assigned to the transports).
If there are defending warships or any kind of sea battle occurs on the SZ (like attacking enemy submarines and/or transports) then it is not possible to have ship bombardment.

This rule also applies to the older editions of Axis and Allies: you can’t assign ships to sea or land combat: if there is an enemy ship then you must clear the SZ first and you can’t do land bombardment if that’s the case.

@dinosaur:

The only thing that changed is that no Bombard attack may be used if there is sea combat.  Note that scrambling one aircraft can trigger the “sea combat” event, and all the heavy ships lose their option to Bombard since they had to deal with the fighter.

The only things that changed is that now casualties taken from bombardment hits can fire back and the number of ships that fire is limited to the number of land units being disembarked. Before you still couldn’t bombard if there was a naval battle.

To scramble planes from airbases it is necessary for a naval battle to happen on the SZ. If there aren’t any defending ships there then you can’t scramble fighters simply to prevent a bombardment.

Edit: just checked the manual and actually you can scramble fighters if there aren’t defending ships.

@HerrVorragend:

Is that working as intended? Thats quite stupid…
Is Japan considered an Island for scrambling purposes?

Yes.
Makes the invasion of Japan a very, very tough nut to crack.
Maybe if someone develops the A-bomb it can be avoided.

Welcome, HerrVorragend!

Hobbes is correct.  Any sea battle prevents offshore bombardment.  This has always been the case in every A&A game.  You have never been allowed to assign some ships to clear the sea zone and some to bombard.  Also, sea combat in the adjacent sea zone does not, and never has, prevent amphibious units from landing (unless the sea battle is lost).

The things that have changed from some previous versions are that air units may scramble from island airbases, bombardment casualties may fire back, and the number of bombarding ships is limited to the number of amphibious land units.

Can the ships that bombard be taken as casualties?

No.