During my upgrade to RSRD noticed in some of the task force files with the various warship movements, quite a few esp in early war are unescorted. Lurker was pretty accurate given the sources he used and when look at combinedfleet website, a lot of times CA's, CL's seem to have made a lot of transits solo. I'm assuming high speed was seen as their assurance against sub attack in those days. I can see IJN not protecting merchants initially as they didnt place value on merchants, and their own submarine doctrine was to gun for warships, assumed initially allies would do the same, but hard to believe they left important ships unescorted, at any point.
What struck in the game was while creating ultra messages for tracking down Shokaku after Coral Sea "wounded bear", it had no escort. Combinedfleet was a little confusing as it states it may have had two DD's escorting that detached when it joined with other DD's in the philippine sea.
I've added DD's to escort wounded bear as find it absurd such an important vessel would be prowling open ocean , especially when damaged alone.
Also upped skill level on many, far too many were easy kills set to competent. Loners usually travel at higher speeds as well. One example is the four heavy cruisers of CruDiv 6 at Coral Sea, they depart truk unescorted heading to join with invasion coverng force(Shoho) .Join and cover Shoho then after shoho is sunk, they split into two groups of two CA's , unescorted.Their high speed would make it difficult, esp in the time before SJ radar to intercept so guess answers my question but still makes me wonder if and why they'd leave such valuable ships unescorted. Again, noticed CA's and CL's throughout the war in RSRD when transiting are often not escorted.
Guess just looking for those familiar with the subject to weigh in.
