After I sink the second destroyer I have to watch this guy fly his biplane around while the fleet gets destroyed. Is this part of the game? My controller is non-responsive at this point except I can still give my fleet orders. What am I supposed to do here??

Uhm, this is the BA2 board, and your question is about BA1.

I'd help you with it, mind, but I don't really remember much. I think that was a pretty easy mission, I don't know what can go wrong. Does it ever recover from that non-responsive state that you speak about?

i had the same problem all i did was rebot the game and start the level again and it went back to normal

When i did that level you let the biplane hit the ship with a torp then you go in and drop a couple of bombs, that finnishes it off!