It’s not even kamikaze though, since they would just ditch their planes and usually at worst risk spending a couple of years in a POW camp. Not necessarily something I’d be itching to volunteer for, but rather that than being in the front lines at Normandy :)
I would guess that the primary reason for not allowing one-way attacks in the game is for balance. Bombers are already powerful enough, if they could suddenly always go 6 (or 7) spaces without needing a landing spot, you’d end up having to protect transports everywhere and not just close to the front lines.
The rule about just needing a theoretical landing spot swings it back the other way a bit, by making sure that carrier-based fighters can always move at least three spaces away from the carrier, which I think is reasonable with respect to game balance (they should have larger range than the carrier itself). Yeah it’s kind of silly when you have to sacrifice a unit against a huge fleet, but all of the game mechanics are weird if you think about them for long enough :)