Thanks!Originally posted by Joel Billings
As far as I know the AI leaves the air groups wherever they are. If they are on the carriers the planes get dumped in the replacement pool. Not sure if it tries to reunite sub-units that have been forced to land on airfields with the carrier (or if the computer does this automatically for all players as suggested above).
That settles the issue for me. I will then leave the CV planes wherever they are, too. I already thought that keeping the squads around would probably get me an unfair advantage over the AI. (For my current game, this means that the Kaga squads will stay on Truk until Kaga comes back - if it does ... 
). Hartmann