HPS Midway questions

[mister T]

First try with this game on the "getting started" scenario. It was quite fun but have some questions about aircrat control. (and sorry for my english)

Playing US side, after finding the japanese CV, I wanted to create a big strike mission with the VB3 squadron + some of the VS3 squadron ( i just used 2/3 of the VS3 squadron for naval search). But I was not capable to assemble them, so I sent them in 2 strikes with the same target. Is it possible to do this in one strike ?

It became quite hard when I wanted to assign F4F escort to them, don't know exactly why but I saw my first strike (VB3) unescorted and the second one (VS3), less powerful, escorted by my F4F. I tried to reassign the fighters to the VB3, it seemed to work fine but there was too much distance between them. I tried to speed up the fighters to join the VB3 squadron.
When they actually reached them, my first strike met the japanese airplane strike which was travelling to my CV ! So a little dogfight happened, I lose some bombers but was quite surprised that my fighters followed the japanese strike instead of escorting my bombers ?

Most of the japanese fighters were down, but my strike was unescorted again :rolleyes: ... at the end, it succeeded in going through the japanese CAP and let the CV damaged :) . And the second strike finished the work (heavily damaged).

After these succesfull strikes, I had two search flight in the area so I tried to assign them a strike mission against a lonely japanese CA. It seemed to work fine, but don't know why I saw them attacked the ship but they never dropped their bombs. I tried several times to assign them a strike mission against this target, I could see them go staight for it, heard the "dive bomber " sound but they never dropped their bomb ? Can someone explain me why ?

And about my CAP, I was able to give manual vector against the japanese incoming strike, but after this how to avoid that they are scattered all over the map ?

I let myself be overwhelmed with just one CV to manage, I can't imagine what can happen in a Midway scenario with 3 or 4 CV at the same time