Divide or Combine?

[aprezto]

What is your opinion on combining or reducing to its component parts the larger LCUs in the game when they are in combat or trying to recover from it.

Here is my opinion that has not been tested (I'd love to have time to do that):

In the front lines the bigger units are better. They don't appear to get thumped as hard in each combat, are able restore a bit of their fighting power because they have in-built support, and you can usually allocate one good commander rather than paying for multiple good ones for its constituent parts. I also find that the smaller units, especially if they are of dubious quality, seem to 'melt' away. Destroyed by attritional damage even when within their own lines.

However, when you retire them to refit and rest, it appears the opposite is true. That the constituent parts, still making use of the pool of support, repair disorganised squads etc faster than the combined unit. Is this your experience?
An addition to this is that bombers can crush a small unit like combat or just bombardment can, when you split a large unit down to its parts, each targetable by bombers, and more heavily affect, a smaller unit. Of course they can do this without having their land units in contact - so behind the lines.

Does the faster recovery rate (assuming my observations are true) offset this in your experience?