@almashir:
I imagine if German ships were operating off the coast of Norway they would be using ground based aircraft to provide a CAP. And said aircraft would certainly respond to a request by radio for air support.
Well, we all know that Larry is kind of a history buff, and in real world this german battleship Tirpitz was operating outside the coast of Norway, when suddenly a couple of Lancaster bombers come all way from England and utterly bombed Tirpitz so much that he sank, and the funny part is that the germans had a very strong fighter base right beside Tirpitz, and they had only one job and that was to protect Tirpitz. It turned out that it was impossible to scramble enogh fighters to denie the brit bombers from attacking, because the coast was soo long. But if this had been an island, like Japan, then the fighters would easily have scrambled and shoot down the bombers. Hope you was amused by this rationale.