I think that the USN would have been better at ship ID than the IJN, not because they were inherently better at it, but mostly because mastery of the air over the target gave them more time for accuracy. But if you read the Warship International article on the Sibuyan Sea battle that Randy Stone referenced, you can see that even with absolute control of the sky over that battlefield, many of the IJN ships were misidentified. So I entirely agree that one or two Japanese float planes, under fire, would not have made any difference at Samar.