Japanese "Victory" at Guadalcanal?

It was the constant raids on the Japanese supply ships that did so much to cripple the Japanese ground forces.

Agreed, which led to the infamous "Tokyo Express" which quite frankly was a failure. Too many supplies were lost and not nearly enough got through. And this pattern would be repeated in other places in the Pacific throughout the war...
 
Having Hiyo not suffer it's engineering casualty before Santa Cruz would have provided as many as 18 A6Ms, 17 D3As and 2 B5N2s to the number of aircraft available for the battle. 37 total aircraft. Would another 37 aircraft of the types described made a difference? Enterprise received two 250kg bomb hits and two near misses during the battle. If Hiyo had been with Junyo and launched her aircraft (say 12 A6M 12 D3a and 7 B5N2s) along with Junyo's historical first strike (12 A6M and 17 D3A) at 9:05-9:14, the extra planes (60 total aircraft) might have made a cripple out of Enterprise too. Enterprise's deck is crowded with recovered aircraft when the first Junyo strike arrived.
Fully agree, and even better if they don't carry that disastruous attack on Cactus on the 15th which crippled Junyo's kankotai, that means both will be at full strenght with approx 36 Zeros, 36 D3As and 18 B5Ns. It defies belief that Enterprise will still survive such an onslaught. Hell they might even cripple South Dakota, a single torpedo is enough to take it out of the war for a few months. Washington will then be alone in November. Butterflies, butterflies...

PS: Speaking of Hiyo's planes, suppose the breakdown still happens, another option is to transfer as many of the A6Ms and D3As as possible to Shokaku, Zuikaku and Zuiho to bring them to full operational strength (72 for the kakus and 30 for Zuiho, they seem to have been below TOE strength in OTL). This could add say another dozen Zeros for CAP and escort and perhaps an extra chutai of D3As to attack Kinkaid. They didn't do this in OTL, but they should have done it.
 
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