You'd need something outlandish like a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor that sank all the battle ships or something like that. Of course, how would the Japanese manage that with the shallow water in the harbor and all the Air Corps interceptors that were there?
No, there's no way that the Japanese could have avoided the Battle of the Philippine Sea in March of '42. Now, if they had gone after the CARRIER force instead of the Battleship formations during the battle, who knows what would have happened. As was, when the our airstrikes from Lexington and Saratoga , along with all the B-17's out of Clark caught the Kino Butai as it was recovering planes, just after finally driving off the earlier strikes from Enterprise & Hornet that had gotten the Japanese CAP so low on fuel & ammo, the Japanese lost the war. Nagumo has to be the worst Admiral of the war, letting himself get caught between carriers and land based B-17's, especially considering the fact that the Flying Forts had already sank three Japanese carriers during the original invasion (I know they were light carriers, but still...). The loss of the California, Nevada and Yorktown, along with the Callahan's cruiser TF (how did the Japanese mistake five CRUISERS for the main battle fleet?) was well worth wiping out all the IJN fleet carriers, along with the Yamato (what a job by the S-23), Hiei and Kongo.
A better question is if the American and Philippine Army would have managed to hold out as well as they did if McArthur hadn't gotten killed in December 9th. Wainwright was nothing short of brillant in his defense of the Islands.
