are you sure? I read it somewhere; and I am talking early war, before Midway
EDIT: I got it from here:
http://www.history.navy.mil/library/onl ... midway.htm
"While the U.S. Navy was busy experimenting with the carrier-versus-carrier duels that would so heavily influence its future battle doctrine, the Japanese were still struggling to perfect their carrier doctrine. Sidetracked by the war in China, Japanese naval aviators made little progress in working out an effective strategy for dealing with enemy flight decks.23 Like their American counterparts, the Japanese expected aerial operations to precede the “decisive” clash of battleships that both sides predicted would determine the outcome of the next war.24 Unlike the Americans, however, they failed to anticipate the importance of carrier-based scouting, concentrating entirely on the attack mission.25 No scouting units were assigned to the Japanese carriers, and little emphasis was placed on this important aspect of carrier warfare. Reconnaissance was relegated to a few floatplanes, which would be catapulted from accompanying cruisers. The Japanese also overlooked or failed to develop the deck park, relying instead on the hangar deck to store and prepare aircraft for flight. On the Japanese carriers, aircraft capacity was determined by the size of the hangar, not of the flight deck, as was the case for the Americans.26 The disparity in aircraft-handling procedures and search strategies resulted in substantial differences in the makeup of the typical air group deployed by the two sides.
(...)
"That the lack of a carrier-borne capability for scouting (reconnaissance, in Japanese naval parlance) contributed greatly to the demise of the Japanese carriers was affirmed by Akagi’s former air officer, Mitsuo Fuchida. As Fuchida explained, writing in 1955, Japanese carrier forces were devoted entirely to the attack mission.45 There were no organic scouting units of any appreciable size in the Japanese navy, and very little emphasis was placed on this important aspect of carrier warfare: “In both training and organization our naval aviators [devoted] too much importance and effort . . . to attack.”46 Reluctance to weaken the carriers’ striking power led to a single-phase search plan that was insufficient—in Fuchida’s opinion—to ensure the carriers’ security. “Had Admiral [Chuichi] Nagumo [the commander of the Mobile Force] carried out an earlier and more carefully planned two-phase search . . . the disaster that followed might have been avoided.”47
"
(...)
"The American victory at the battle of Midway was abetted by major weaknesses in Japanese carrier doctrine. The most significant of these was the IJN’s inability to ensure (its leadership having previously failed to allocate sufficient assets for searching) that no enemy carriers were in striking range of its own. This fatal flaw in doctrine caused the Japanese to be caught while their hangar decks were packed with aircraft being fueled and armed. The outcome of an attack in such circumstances had been first predicted in 1933 by Commander Hugh Douglas, U.S. Navy, before an audience at the Naval War College: “In case an enemy carrier is encountered with planes on deck, a successful dive bombing attack by even a small number of planes may greatly influence future operations.”50 The deadliness of such a contingency was well understood by American carrier aviators, who continually worried about being caught in that perilous situation.51"
