Quote Originally Posted by Dutch_guy
Well, that made no sense at all. Funny though

Although I have often wondered why they didn't just send the eagles to mordor to drop the ring in the volcano, but I just figured that would make for an uninteresting story ~

Maybe the nazgul anti-air capabilities prevented a solely airborne operation, so they needed a combined arms approach, with a stealth infiltration mission to wipe out the air defenses to open for such a strike. As it turned out, the air cover defeated itself later by going too close to Minas Tirith's anti-air missile cover, and the downed air admiral became helpless and easily taken out by a little hobbit, causing a rout of the remaining air force, subsequently opening for the planned air extraction for the stealth mission, which by then happened to have completed its objectives.