Talk:List of fleet standard aircraft carriers by upgraded maximum stats/@comment-119.74.69.20-20150209123359/@comment-84.90.161.45-20150212095650

Green planes are fighters and only participate in the opening airstrike. They shoot down enemy fighters and bombers and determine your air power for the whole node battle, triggering or not Artillery Spotting day battle special attacks, depending if you got Air Supremacy, Air Superiority (Artillery Spotting OK), Air Parity (No Artillery Spotting), Air Suppression or Air Denial (enemy does Artillery Spotting on you). They don't deal damage to enemy ships.

Blue planes are torpedo bombers and participate in opening airstrike and shelling phases. They are more effective in opening airstrike and their effectiveness depends on the number of surviving planes. They can also perform Contact during opening airstrike, increasing the possible damage dealt to enemy ships by a percentage according to the quality of the plane that triggered it.

Red planes are dive bombers and participate in opening airstrike and shelling phases. They are more effective in shelling phases and are supposedly tougher than blue planes. Their numbers don't matter for damage calculation during shelling, given 2 carriers with the same stats, one with one red plane left and another with ten red planes left, their shelling damage would be theoretically the same on the same enemy ship. Of course RNG-sama plays a huge role on this.

Yellow planes are special. They don't participate in air combat, instead they provide other bonuses.

Saiun prevents Red T Crossing engagement, turning it into Head-On engagement. This is a double-edged blade: on one hand, it can play against you in BB heavy maps where a Green T Crossing allows the enemy to hit harder than normal and force a retreat; on the other hand, if you get Red T Crossing in a submarine heavy map (1-5 for example), chances are that you won't be able to sink all enemy subs even with the best ASW loadout.

Type 2 Recon only purpose is to provide a stronger Contact effect during opening airstrike, massively increasing the possible damage dealt.

For more information, please refer to the Combat page.

I hope this helps.