When the Japanese lost the cream of their experienced aircrews at Midway it dealt the IJN carrier arm a blow it never recovered from for the rest of the war.
In a VAS campaign one of the things you can do with "Experience Dice" is increase the Crew Command Level of your ships: I presume the same would appply to a carrier's aircraft Flights (or it should, anyway, perhaps giving more experienced Flights a combat bonus.) This would behoove you to protect your more experienced crews, and want to get them back safely aboard after a mission.
I'm working on some "Carrier Operations" rules for recovering and reaming aircraft. Briefly, each CV will have a card with four boxes: Landed (Flight Deck), Hangar, Arming, and Ready (Flight Deck). During the End Phase a CV will take Flights that were recovered this turn from the Landed box and move them to the Hangar: the turn after that they move to Arming, the turn after that to Ready, and then can be relaunched during the following turn's aircraft movement phase. Planes could thus be in the air for a new strike three turns after recovery. Carriers caught with Flights on their Flight Deck or Arming take extra damage, and such onboard Flights may also take damage in the attack. There will be limits as to how many Flights can be moved from box to box in a turn, how many Flights can be on Deck and still Launch or Recover aircraft, and so on. I'll post the suggested rules once I get them finished and have had a chance to try them out on paper a few times.
