I think that the Japanese fighter pilots were too eager to get kills and forgot their mission was to protect the fleet.
I read a book written by a British naval pilot in the Pacific during WWII.
I was shocked at how many planes and pilots they lost in non-combat operations.
If the Japanese had similar losses?
We forget that these Japanese carriers took a cruise into the Indian Ocean after Pearl Harbor trying to destroy the British Fleet.
We also forget that we had an agreement with the British where we took the lead in the Atlantic and they took the lead in the Pacific.
Pretty sure the agreement was the other way around.
The other thing is that after yet another one of British Admiral Pound’s disasters, the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse off what is now Malaysia, the British didn’t *have* anything they could risk in the Pacific so any agreement would have been moot then.
Part of the British naval aviation losses was because a number of their naval aircraft types were kind of terrible.