Admiral John Byng wrote:
It is clear that the Japanese navy did not really understand that a shift had taken place from battleships to naval air power. For most of the Pacific war they protected their battleships to such an extent that they saw very little of the fighting while their carriers were sacrificed. They still considered the battleships as the main punch and kept waiting for an oportunity to use them to deliver the knockout blow.
Hi Roger,
The importance and use of carriers was in all Navies not really clear at least and the theory about their use between the wars is an interesting thing to read. In general core was still the battle fleet, but now backed by air power delivered with carriers. All Navies tried to bolster their battleships with more armour against air threat, but there was in all Navies an internal fight between modern and traditional thinking about future.
After Washington Treaty, the number of battleships were low and more important, there were no real "2nd class battleships" further existing which could be used in a more dangerous role, because lesser important if being lost. The battleships remained, as told in the role of the capital ship and core in all Navies, but the point was now, how to find a possibility to use them without higher risk of loss.
Japan found an answer maybe, by using their carriers as an offensive and long(er) range weapon to attack the enemy without putting their battleships in higher danger to do this job ... like a new sort of spear head of the fleet. Pearl Harbour is a good example for it. Far away from any threat of enemy gun fire, they started the air raid against the US battle fleet + enemy carriers as same important target. As all know, they only got battleships and only by chance not the carriers with it. Thinking was that a such weakened US fleet is in further fights an easy target to fight on sea with now superior combined force.
So in result of Pearl Harbour, US gun power was for a time mostly terminated but air power not. The US Navy made then a step more as Japan did, by using the left carriers as core and offensive weapon, backed by left battleships and cruisers.