Phantine Air Corps - Regimental History: The Phantine Air Corps is a recent addition to the forces of the Astra Miltarum. In fact, before the second phase of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade and Warmaster Macaroth's daring offensive in the Khan Group, the Phantine Air Corps had been confined to the skies of its homeworld of Phantine. Phantine itself also came under attack by the troops of the Blood Pact, when that Chaotic foe conducted a wide-scale counterattack on the Crusade's flanks, but was saved by the hasty redeployment of Imperial troops under command of Lord General Barthol Van Voytz. With the increasing resistance faced by the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, the Phantine Air Corps was only recently called to fight off-world, their baptism by fire coming in the Enothian War.The history of the Phantine Air Corps is closely linked to that of their highly unusual homeworld, Phantine. Its soil is tremendously rich in valuable chemical substances, in particular Promethium, which even today constitutes Phantine's main export. However, the continuous exploitation and refinement of Phantine's mineral resources has polluted its lower atmosphere to the point that life on the surface became untenable. Whereas most human civilisations faced with the same dilemma chose to live underground or in sealed hive cities, on Phantine the choice was made to continue to exploit Phantine's natural wealth and instead relocate Phantine's population above the cloudline. The world's people were moved into newly erected sky-cities which were constructed on the world's highest mountain ranges or on top of its now-uninhabited hive complexes. Phantine's lower troposphere is now composed of a sea of highly corrosive gases and acids locally known as "the Scald", for those unfortunate enough to be exposed to it would be eaten alive in mere solar minutes. This has led to a complete reorganisation of Phantine's formerly land-based Planetary Defence Forces, which by necessity took to the skies.Because of the Scald, Phantine is difficult to assail. Every major sky-city has its own complement of aircraft and Planetary Defence Forces stationed there, but as many of the world's domed cities lie beyond the range of a single aircraft, the Phantine Air Corps also maintains great aerostats to carry troops, provisions and supplies from one city to another. These aerostats are truly gigantic, more akin to flying military bases than mere transport ships. Each aerostat is held aloft by gigantic gas-filled cylinders and is propelled by a series of powerful engines located in great nacels kept away from the main body of the aircraft. These engines use great fans rather than turboreactors or Plasma Drives to limit the spontaneous combustion of the aerostat's gas reserves or a catastrophic chain-reaction with the strange and often highly volatile gases of the Scald. The great aerostats are poorly armed and rely heavily on their complements of bombers and fighters for their own protection or to mount an offensive. Each aerostat carries several squadrons -- or "wings" as they are called by the Phantine.Tactical analyses of the Phantine Liberation campaign suggest that it was this advantage in mobility that permitted the Imperial counterattack on Phantine to be so effective, as the Blood Pact had not succeeded in taking control of one of these aerostats. One aerostat is big enough to transport three regiments of the Imperial Guard, their equipment and supplies, their transport vessels and its own wings of aircraft. The Phantine Air Corps is known to field several of these leviathans. During the assault on Ouranberg, no less than six of these "zeppelins" took to the skies: the Aeolus, Boreas, Nimbus, Skyro, Trenchant and the Zephyr. Of these, only the Skyro was lost during the operation, its captain choosing to close with Ouranberg and let its troops rappel directly onto its objective rather than letting its transports brave the storm of anti-air fire coming from the sky-city. However, the volume of fire coming from Ouranberg proved too much, even for the Skyro, which perished in a flaming inferno once its mission was accomplished. Unfortunately, the size of the zeppelins means that they cannot be transported offworld and must remain on Phantine.The Phantine Air Corps carried the brunt of the Imperial military effort to liberate their homeworld, although their casualties were few compared to the thousands of Guardsmen that died during the fighting on the "ground" at Cirenholm or at Ouranberg. Yet the Air Corps was tasked with countless different missions: combat air patrols to guarantee the security of their zeppelins, bombing raids, interception missions and even aerial reconnaissance. The Air Corps participated in countless minor skirmishes or dogfights and was part of every major offensive. It was this tenacity and the telling results of these operations that would see the Phantine Air Corps eventually promoted to frontline duties.