How many casualties did the four carriers have ?
Carrier fighters were able to shoot down far more kamikaze aircraft than any amount of deck armour would have protected against showing the value of absolute numbers , but in the early war period IJN aircraft had little difficulty in penetrating USN CAPs ; near the end of the war , veteran American fighter pilots in superior F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair fighters were able to defeat the young , inexperienced and ill - trained kamikaze pilots with ease and run up huge kill scores but attackers were still able to get through .