9? I would take 9. I have to plan for 12+ sectors of flight and recovery this week on 4 different airframes and one of them really has no business going the full route and another of them barely makes if it sees minimal to mid level combat. I landed my P38 Frame with 7 minutes to spare Frame 1. Frame 2 with about 11 minutes. Safe landings can be done with time/fuel management. You guys have droppers too don't ya? Another suggestion is to fly out meet the bombers. The last two frames I have found the defenders at within a half sector of the target. Would give you more engagement time.
Except that the logs do not support your claim.
In Frame 1 your squad was attacking Bremen and you encountered the first squad of Bremen defenders(Unforgiven) at about T+35. Kn and LCA was next in on the bomber stream at about T+40-45. This engagement occurred 50 miles out from Bremen. So in frame 1 to saw 75% of all the defenders of your objective 50 miles out within 45 minutes of launch.
In Frame 2, Kn was the first to engage the bomber stream targeting ammo strat in 9,13,9. Our first attack was on the escorts over the stream in 7,14,8. Again this was about 50 miles out at about T+45. Your squad was attacking the other objective, so I don't know how those squads were set up, but for mine the combat began 2 sectors from the target.
In both cases KN's first contact came at a point close to the mid point between out take off field and the closest Allied air spawn. The routes taken were more or less strait. There was no patrolling in a given area.