340mag brings up very good points. As I had said earlier, fighting Naval battles in the 1940�s wasn�t like it is today where we have ways of accurately pin-pointing enemy ships. Back then anything over the horizon was pretty safe from detection, and in most cases both sides were only making educated guesses as to where each others ships actually were.
Unlike their planes and pilots, the Japanese didn�t have the luxury of having �throw-away� ships and they had to protect what they had just like we did.
