The point that I was making was in reference to the game itself. Perhaps one day we should try it and see what happens, get 10-12 people in TBFs attacking a CV group at the same time. Or get 10-12 ppl in SBDs coming in from 10K on a single target. I'm sure some guys will 'fly right through' while others won't get enough time to release.
We have done that many times in scenarios (Coral Sea 2005, Operation Husky, Coral Sea 2009, and Philippine Phandango -- pictorials AAR's of all of those, with pictures of what the attack runs ended up looking like, are here:
http://www.electraforge.com/brooke/flightsims/scenarios/scenarios.html ). Those are scenarios with lots of training and practice and people working to go in as close together as possible and attacking a squadron at a time. Yet even there, you won't see more that 1-2 planes going in as if they were in formation because folks just get a bit more separated than that as they individually line up for the attack. For those, we turn the auto ack way, way down and disable 5" manned guns, or no torpedo bombers would ever make it in.
During actual combat situations, squadrons would arrive over the target at the same time, thus attacking various targets and not allowing the entire AA battery to focus on a single plane. A good study are the squadron AARs on the attacks on Yamato and Musashi.
I've read a lot of accounts of those encounters and many, many more, as well as looking at photographs of attack runs and footage of attack runs for both US and Japanese forces. Yes, a squadron goes in. But when you look at what the actual attack runs look like, rarely are they a squadron attacking in formation. They are, effectively from our point of view AH with regard to ack range, etc., a plane at a time, even though, yes, it is a whole squadron attacking.
On the opposite side of the coin, Japanese attacks were often made by a smaller number, or individual aircraft, who met the wall 'o flak from the 5", 40mm, and 20mm.
Later in the war, yes, but not necessarily in the big earlier encounters such as Midway and Coral Sea. Yet there, and even at Pearl Harbor, where there was no aerial opposition and hundreds of attackers, you don't see many (or perhaps any? I'm not sure -- I haven't seen any pics or footage that shows it, but I can't say none exist) planes going in while in formation. You see mostly what we would call a plane at a time or what would here be in effect a plane at at time (i.e., ack focusing on a plane as it comes in, then the next plane, and so on -- not 4 or 8 or 12 at once).
