Attaching Air Wings to Carriers

[Leadfingers]

I have a lot of Carrier Air Wings on shore with lots of experience. If I put them in storage and then add them to my carriers, they lose all the experience.

So Im trying to add them to the Carriers, directly, and it's a nightmare. I can send planes to the fleet, but they're assigned to random carriers, and I can't seem to drag them from one carrier to another.

What's the best way to do this?

 

[SlinkyTWF]

I haven't noticed this problem. But to get air wings on the right carrier, either base them in different ports before ferrying to them, or move one air wing at a time. The AI will fill one CV at a time until it is at capacity, so start with one type, say fighters, and then add your dive bomber or torpedo bomber groups afterward.

 

[xtfoster]

I've never had a problem assigning multiple wings to different carriers in the same fleet. You just have to do it one carrier at a time. I typically pre-train my Carrier Air Groups, so I usually have them waiting when the carrier finally finishes construction.
(My Method)
1) Select the fleet with the carriers you want to assign them to, then click the "air base" button in the fleet window. (I do it this if there aren't currently any wings stationed in the fleet already, which is usually the case for me because my ships deploy to an active training squadron so finding the actual carrier might take a while.) This should bring up all of the individual carrier "air bases" for that fleet.
2) Shift-Select the air base with the air wings you want to deploy.
3) Shift-Select the wings you want to deploy to the first carrier then right-click on the carrier you want them to deploy to.
4) Continue this for each Carrier/Wing you want to deploy.

 

[frscltngdsklght]

You can't drag air wings from one carrier to another but you can reassign them to carriers in the same task force. Just select the airwings and click on the name bar of the carrier you want to assign them to.

 

[Anaraxes]

Planes don't have experience; pilots do. You can't "put air wings in storage" -- that is, disband the wing, sending the aircraft back to the national stockpile -- and retain the experience, because the pilots are all going elsewhere (and maybe not even flying planes when they get reassigned to a job). When you bring those planes back out of the desert, they get new pilots, which have no training. Manpower straight out of the pool is untrained. The game doesn't track experience in various army equipment and aircraft for each individual man in the manpower pool. Experience is tracked by unit (air wing, division, ship), and just gets lost when units are disbanded and the men go back in the pool.

If you want to train a wing of carrier planes, but not have it take up carrier space, you can do that at a regular airbase. "Storage" in this case would be some functioning air wings that happen to kept at some land base somewhere. You can put those wings on Pilot Exercises, train them up, and they will retain that experience when you move to them to a carrier. (As others have said, to move them you simply select a wing and right click on the airbase icon of the carrier you want, just as with moving planes between normal airbases.)