Land-based naval attack question.

[FlyByKnight]

Greetings gentlemen.
I've recently started a game as Japan against the AI alongside my longer-running Allied playthrough. It's December 11th and they've got the Enterprise and Lexington tf's outside of Wake and Jaluit respectively to attack my shipping there.
KB is still withdrawing from PH after a 2-day raid.
My Betties and Nells based at Kwajalein and the nearby island, despite being in range and the Lexington group showing up on the map, have not launched any attacks. (Yes, they are set to 'Naval attack')
I find this annoying because the Force Z attack occurred successfully on Dec 7. What are the necessary requirements for Land-based bombers to launch attacks in this situation?
I am playing a version of scenario 2 that I tweaked for my own purposes. Allied OOB is unchanged.

[Odin]

Morning.

Do you have fighters assigned for escort them?

They won´t fly without when facing enemy fighters.

[Alfred]

Read chapter 7 of the manual to learn how air operations work.  Players who refuse to read the relevant parts of the manual are consistently frustrated.
 
There is special and quite specific code to deal with the 7 December 1941 turn only.
 
Alfred

[HansBolter]

Bomber squadrons with really aggressive commanders will SOMETIMES ignore the Escort/CAP ratio and fly blindly into heavy CAP, but usually they will not.

Force Z has no dedicated LRCAP covering it on Dec. 7th.

The Allied carries have dedicated CAP flying over their TFs.

This is what allows the Japanese to use the KB to go just about anywhere on the map they want to in '42.
Allied LBA is weak and even when approaching an Allied base with heavy fighter concentrations, the KB can stand off outside the limited Allied fighter range and be assured the Allied bombers won't sortie.

[FlyByKnight]

Thank you for the information. I will keep this in mind.