This is a BUG.
They are coming from the carriers set to attack Midway.
What happens is this. The game has 2 types of groups. "Scripted" are units placed into a group by hand. They appear on a certain date, and head on their way. "Random" groups are set to spawn with a % chance on a date and time, with a % chance for each ship in the group.
Random groups do not exist until spawned.
The scripted units have a bug. While the ships do not appear until the date/time they spawn, their AIRGROUPS do. So you have all the Midway CV force's planes flying around spawning out of thin air.
This bug is in stock, and to some extent in TM since the Midway group is still scripted.
RSRD doesn't have this problem because he uses a random group for Midway (random only in name, all the right ships are there with the spawn %s set to 100%). The trade off is you are limited to the formations that SH4 will generate. The stock Midway is horrid, period, no redeeming qualities, plus it has this airgroup bug. ICL/TM has an accurate Midway (the formation of the Kido Butai is accurate, with a 7km spacing, and a guard DD a few hundred meters astern of each CV aligned with the Port side of the flight deck), but also has the airgroup bug (the changes in CV airgroups mitigate this to near zero though). RSRD has a somewhat accurate disposition of ships, and no problems associated with scripted missions.
My personal plan is to experiment with something a little crazy to get the best of both worlds, but I need to test it.
tater
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