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Been playing Hakko Ichiu campaign as Japanese against an evenly-matched Allied player. Sunk far more Allied carriers and battleships than historical (and he, the same), took the North Island of New Zealand, and am in now in May 1944 with the Allies invading Luzon 6 months ahead of historical.

One tactic we have both used is increasing the size of the fighter wings on our carriers. This has been especially effective for the Allies in neutralizing Japan's kamikaze tactics. But, given how effective it is in game, has anyone thought to wonder why it wasn't done in real life?

I'm guessing it's because the air-to-air algorithm needs to be tweaked as, with the chaos of a furball with escorting aircraft or even working to find all the incoming bombers or kamikazes, it's hard to down them all before they reach the fleet. The program likely gives too much efficiency to large fighter groups.

If you were the Allied player you could see that the Allies DID increase the size of their fighter groups and the number of fighter squadrons on board. That reflects what happened IRL.
And as for the furball/confusion thing, that does happen in game (at least the regular game) but keep in mind the IJ fighter pilots put in Kamikazes were barely trained rookies.

IRL almost all were shot down before they hit anything or simply missed because they had not had any practice doing the "pop-up and dive onto the deck" maneuver. The few that did get through to make hits were as likely to be lone strays that followed US aircraft back to the fleet as survivors of a big furball.

So sometimes it is better to throw a number of separate attacks at the Allies rather than one huge coordinated one. Separate them by using different bases and set some to primary Naval Attack (for morning strikes if the DL is kept high) while others could be set to secondary strike Naval Attack (for afternoon strikes).