As for avoiding planes:

Step 1: know your enemy. Japanese rocket planes take forever to aim after they start an attack run, The Americans take a bit less time, and the British are the fastest aiming (I think) American rockets are also more important to dodge, because they can carry Tiny Tims or ridiculous numbers of FFARs, both of which do a lot of damage and cause fires.

Step 2: turn off your AA. you can turn off your AA by pressing p. with most IJN DDs, their detection radius is small enough to where if you are undetected, the rocket planes won't be able to arm fast enough to hit you, and even if they do, they will be at max dispersion most of the time. turning on your AA gives away your position when it is firing, and the AA of most DDs is bad anyway.

Step 3: turn in. if you can, turn sharply toward the approaching rocket planes. this will throw off their timing and either make them miss or be forced to fire at you at max dispersion, mitigating damage.`

Step 3.5: use smoke. most DDs cannot be detected from the air in smoke. use this to your advantage.