Naval battles are in pre-beta. You can buy your way into it through the War Thunder store. There is 1 American pack, 1 Russian Pack and 1 German pack
Its like not really just an alpha but they're not ready to say they're in beta 'cause the whole game is still in beta so it'd really mean final prod version so its prebeta
Gaijin officially reached out to it's YouTube partners and other community e-lebrities to ask their own audiences what they thought of the Greenwater Navy stuff so far. So responses to Gaijin are going in via Baron von Games, PhlyDaily and others. There's a general feel that Time To Kill is way too long with dakka alone, and that larger vessels would better justify the use of torpedoes/depth charges/mines. Maybe not BBs, but maybe we will see Light DD's and 'Vettes in the later tiers.
So I bought into the naval beta (still closed beta). And you can bring your aircraft into the naval battles. You do have to earn points from your boats to use aircraft. Tier 1 and 2 are small boats (like motor torpedo and coastal gunboats and minesweepers). But tier 3 does have destroyers. Tier 4 is a single light cruiser. If you don't bring your own aircraft and you earn enough points you can still choose a fighter or bomber but its picked randomly from 3 of each type.
I like it. And it's not really infringing on world of warships territory. Most of maps are island fighting (among islands) not open ocean.
Well if you do manage to use an aircraft in a naval battle you work on both whatever boat/ship you are researching and whatever plane. Germans seem really OP though. I think some of their boats have guns that can one shot other boats. Because they have friggin 88s.
The germans (in the game) have versions of this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebel_ferry Slow as crap. But could carry 4 88s.
I love the first American boat with a 40mm cannon as its primary armament. Just finished a battle where I took out 3 boats and 3 aircraft with it. Also just unlocked the first of 2 boats with a single 3 inch gun on it. Well they have other guns but they are all secondary guns.