There are some really sweet aircraft in real life that are painted in neutrality patrol colors, bright gold on the wings. War nerds love this stuff because it was a very brief period of semi-war between the era where the USA was actually fighting and when it was basically an armed and interested neutral. For this game, that’s probably enough to include it, even if there was no exact game reason to do so.
The game reasons are obscure, in almost 100 games I’ve never done much more than put a destroyer there for fun.
But they exist
- US ships in that area aren’t all stuck in a big pile, could be in 2 squares facing the enemy
- that allows you to screen the square with the USA to protect the USA home fleet and UK, but there is almost always another path
- however, if you block 102 and 89, now he can’t attack your main force (at least with a surface fleet, or with a substack, if you had DDs there…)
(If they didn’t let you block 102, there would be no effective block and the German surprise peacetime attack via GIB would be permitted at all times…if the SZ is hostile then the Germans also cant simply park carriers there during the NCM to recover 4-range planes that just attacked 101/89, they have to fight for this LZ. )
- but its not much of a block considering the situation, availability of bases, and the limited number of reasons why Germany would want to try this
- so probably, its just a fun way to tie up a bunch of your ships and give the USA player an intimidating place to park…
- and, as the others said, shuttle 4-range aircraft over there without requiring a UK carrier to receive them, which is super grog historical ferry-flight WAC action as well…this still requires coordination and tying up substantial assets
my conclusion is that 1) its fluffy and historical fun 2) its a patch that would be a required add on to the simpler, basic rule, to facilitate a block during a AAF (Ambush America First) and avoid the situation that arises when Germany puts everything it can into a crazy SZ 91–>SZ101 attack. The USA could usually fight this off, but what if USA bought transports and weaker stuff–again, without this block as few as a couple of subs from SZ 91 could destroy the whole stack…but never goes down if you put 1 x DD on 102 and 1 x DD on 89…