Mote,
Any notional third strike would run into a crippling level of American fighter cover ... - I think that you assume an integrated fighter/radar defensive network that did not yet exist on a Dec.7'41 Oahu.
The Opana Point mobile radar at the NE tip of Oahu (if it didn't suffer yet another of it's frequent breakdowns) could have tracked an inbound KB 3rd strike to within 20 miles of shore before it was blinded by ground clutter return signals. Twenty miles is far-to-far away to visually acquire a single engined warplane so how can you guarantee that any already airbourne US pilots will make any midair interceptions at all ? Answer: You can't. It would be quite possible for a 3rd wave to slip right past defending US fighters even with the primitve radar coverage that the US had there that day.
Remember too that not all of the surviving US fighters could be in the air on CAP at any one time. In fact only 1/3 likely would be. Another 1/3 would just landing and re-fueling while the final 1/3 would be awaiting takeoff to replace the first 1/3 in the air. So the (IIRC) 27 surviving P-40s and 16 P-36s would translate to just 14 or so in the air at any one time. And even those would would be split up flying patrols at different points around the island. I'd predict that just 2-4 green US fighter pilots would be able to initially meet the 56 or so China combat veteran Zeros escorting in any 3rd strike.
Not good for the US side, at all.
Wohlstetter points out in "Warning and Decision" that General Short had not yet even planned for, let alone trained and established, any kind of visual aircraft observation warning system (with landline communications back to the Aircraft Early Warning Center) to be used to suppliment the still incomplete radar grid (only 5 mobile US radars worked even partime by Dec.7, out of the 6 mobile and 3 fixed installations already approved). Only 5 (very partime) out of the 9 (100% fulltime) needed to thoroughly cover that island.
Study of the Oahu 1st and 2nd air strike maps quickly shows that the Japanese went to great lengths to fly over Oahu's coast from every direction possible thus further complicating the interception tasks of any US fighter pilots who managed to survive the 1st and 2nd air strikes. Even after the second strike departed the US still historically had NOT A CLUE about which direction the Japanese had come from.
They couldn't just mass at Oahu's NE Opana Point tip and expect a Japanese 3rd wave to just fly right into them. Their strengtrh would have to be diluted to patrol over all coasts of that island while the 3rd wave would arrive (somewhere over that lengthy coastline) en masse. With lots of Zeros flying escort. Hardly a happy situation for the then locally outnumbered USAAF defenders.
In fishing terms, Oahu's radar early warning network was far more "hole" than "net" on Dec.7'41. A real scarcity of delicate electronic spare parts was the main reason (and a lack of EXPERIENCED radar operators being the second) for the Oahu radars being cut back to such limited operational and training hours so I would think that an expected US attempt to run them fulltime after 0755 would quickly result in the failure and canibalization of further US radar sets. Resulting in even more "holes" in the radar net.
And this at a time when the Zero's new combat capabilities were still largely unknown to the US military. Chenault's (sp ?) AVG group in China was beginning to develop good P-40 fighter tactics to deal with the Zero but those (eventually combat proven) tactical concepts had yet to be trained into any of the USN, Marine or USAAF pilots based on Oahu that morning.
...and AAA. - granted that by the time a Japanese 3rd wave arrrives the US AAA plan would have been far better prepared to fight back. Ammo would actually have been deliverd to most of the AA guns from where it had been centrally locked up (inside the Aliamanu Crater Depot) by General Short's direct order.
Honolulu would of course, have been even more heavily shelled than it historically was, as a direct result.
The vast majority of that US AAA coverage was concentrated by Genaral Short's plan within a 2,500 yd radius of Ford Island so as to better protect the USN's Pacific Fleet. It is unknown to me if Japanese air attacks on the infrastructure around PH would have earned as fierce an AA response as additional attacks on the USN's warships located there, certainly would have ? But I agree that if further air attacks were made at Ph then Japanese aircraft losses would have been heavier.
NHBL's question did however raise the questionn of a 3rd wave being planned from the start so Japanese targeting lists for all three waves could have been modified so as to reduce the impact of US AAA increasing around PH throughout that day.
I find it difficult to agree with your, "The carrier strike forces would return as a spent force and incapable of further offensive action until reconstituted." - More shot-up, certainly. But impotent ? Hardly.