Originally Posted by T. A. Gardner

Now, on the other hand, the "wet dream" version where the US does everything right would be, I think, something like this:

First, the USAAF has actually linked by phone and radio the two SCR 286 radar stations available to a fighter direction center at Clark Field. The Army has practiced its fighters to operate something like the RAF did in the middle and later stages of the Battle of Britain. That is, they have the aircraft aloft on a warning of approaching enemy aircraft and at altitude in plenty of time. The modern P-40s are instructed to strike first going for the escorts and drawing them off. The P-36 and P-35 then follow these fighters in in a second wave and blast the now unescorted (and in the Japanese case, nearly defenseless) bombers.
Hacking down a few raids on the scale the US did later at Guadalcanal or Midway where the Japanese suffer bomber losses of 50 to 75% would have definitely put the hurt on the Japanese. In such conditions the US might have been able to hold air parity if not superiority but in reality such things were not going to happen in the PI in 1941.