Fascinating - I'd had no idea that the USN had already been "getting comfortable" with the newer, non-surface combatant technologies in the run up to the war. I'd always somewhat assumed it had been a "battleships or nothing!" followed by "well, as we really don't want nothing, carriers!"
There's a new book out on the USS Lexington that goes into the pre-war exercises in detail. At some point in the early 1930's the carriers were in the exercises and neither team was paying them much attention. Then, in one of the games, one of the admirals put one of the Lexington Class into the scouting forces while the other kept his with his battle line. The unit in the scouting forces rapidly became the dominating focus of the exercise, with the one roped to the battle line being quite ineffective in comparison. I think that was the origin of the shift in the US navy from battleships to carriers.