The Japanese had battleships in addition to the cruisers and destroyers.
The Japanese battleships couldn’t lower their big guns enough to hit our ships. The shells went right over them.
My late FIL's jeep carrier was sunk by surface fire from those ships. He'd have been delighted if what you said was true.
The Japanese battleships were using armor piercing 14 inch shells. At first they were going right through both sides of the destroyers and destroyer escorts.
They figured out what was happening pretty quickly and changed to high explosive shells.
The Japanese AP shells in some cases went right through those unarmored ships and failed to explode. Theory is that the spotters mis-identified their targets (escort carriers, destroyers & destroyer escorts). They were ‘assisted’ in this error by the furious counterattack from the USN task groups.
“The Japanese battleships couldn’t lower their big guns enough to hit our ships. The shells went right over them”
I doubt that. Just the slightest turn away from the target would hat rolled the guns down.