"Planes on Malta"

[pzpat]

I'm playng the 1.60 beta:
In Sept 1940 the event "Planes on Malta" triggers, and keeps on triggering until the Germans have no STP's left. The problem with that was that the Germans had no convoys in the Med; they were all in the Channel. The planes on Malta also nullified two of my convoys between France and England. Since this effect is not only ahistorical but irrational--why would planes on Malta attack the Channel when there are many targets in the Med, and how could they do so without encountering German fighters--it was a puzzlement. Then I found that the Italians had not been affected; they had suffered no STP loss. So I put a couple of Italian divisions in Tobruk to come back at the English, who were practically at its doorstep.
On the next turn it was the Italians who lost all their STP's from the planes on Malta. I did a fighter sweep over Malta and discovered that there WERE NO PLANES stationed on Malta, just one infantry division. I was a little upset. How could we get multiple "planes on Malta" events when there were no planes on Malta in the first place? I thought that would be the primary prerequisite to the event triggering in the first place.
And then I looked at the Italian units just outside Tobruk. Their values were suddenly all 0-0. How could that be? They were all at supply levels 12 and 13, taking their supply from Tobruk, yet the computer had changed their effectiveness to one per cent. Since their supply levels didn't depend on disrupted convoys, it appeared to be a computer cheat and I feel that I might just turn Britain to human control for a turn or until the Italian supply returns to what it should be, which should be around forty per cent.
I had originally thought of complaining that even though my fleets and air units seem to know where the Allied navies were, there was no way of them passing that information along to me, so I could plan accordingly. But this latter matter has turned out to be just a minor matter.
What am I missing?