Some thoughts:
- Lysanders: I doubt these would fly far out into the sea, especially if they were army pilots rushed to coastal defense. These could be scripted like current air patrols over Bay of Biscay, except they'd fly up and down the coast, able to spot an U-Boat and raise alarm if you sail within sight from shore.
- Hurricanes, Spitfires etc. in convoy protection: unless we're talking carrier-based, I strongly suspect that the convoys they were protecting were English Channel and South-East England coastal convoys, and "protection" in this case meant deterring Luftwaffe.
- Making convoy protection squadrons spawned from airbases in not that unrealistic. That's just my recollection from Clay Blair's book, but what seemed to happen is, because they didn't have aircraft to protect all convoys at all times (at least until late war), SOP was to saturate skies with aircraft over convoys that were under attack or expected imminent attack. More or less how spawning system works : when they learn you're in area, then they start sending planes.
- Re "air raid" planes: I'd choose the option of scripting them in campaign. Leave base air groups for what they do best (reacting to detected threats/targets in airbase's range), and add an air group for every U-Boat base flying regular high altitude air raids (might be good to check how often these bases were really bombed).
It's a bit more predictable (experienced player might learn never to dock at Brest on Mondays and never leave Lorient on Thursdays - unless you can randomize frequency that is), but allows to retain more control over how these "special events" unfold. Relying on air wings might end up requiring much more work time playtesting and finetuning to work well than scripting those groups in.
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