I can't take "hope for good luck early in the game" as a serious strategy! The US can survive heavy losses early in the game because they get new ships every turn, while Japan gets few replacements. As the US I will gladly trade 2 for 1 in most instances, especially aircraft carriers. The US air advantage can more easily be nullified by good use of the Japanese marines. The US can have all ten air units but if he doesn't have any bases beyond the board edges they won't do any good.

A strategy that has been discussed was Japan sending a heavy fleet to Central Pacific hoping for group uncertains to show up. I have played more than once that the US lost 2-4 carriers on the first two turns and still won the game. Japan needs to take full advantage of the Pearl Harbor raid and dispatch most of what is sitting there. This way the US will be short on surface ships and Japan can go into battles calling for night actions knowing that they have the US forces outgunned by either night or day and at night they can run around the US surface forces and get rid of any US carriers, then in the day actions all the Japanese carriers will be able to concentrate firepower on the land based air units.

I expect that between the Pearl raid and action in theCentral Pacific the US usually loses around 8 ships the first turn. As far as the LBA, if Japan is putting patroling ships in both Samoa and Hawaii I think the US player would be nuts to NOT have his LBA there to defend his most important ports. In that instance it is wiser to leave Indonesia to the British and whatever carriers got to Australia. Yes Japan should be defending S. Pacific, Marshalls and Indo with LBA.

It could be asserted that to gain the Flag the Battle would have to be in Samoa, meaning that Hawaii would probably be lost to conversion on turn 3.This assumes the flag is a critical issue. If Japan has split its forces I'd go in without a flag if that was the better battle. Also Japan taking Hawaii on turn two is by no means "near certain conversion on urn 3". I have played games where Japan committed heavily to a Hawaii attack on turn two, I completely ignored them and used my ships to punch out a few lightly defended zones instead, and then just went and knocked out the Japanese patrols in Hawaii on turn three to save the port.

Suppose Japan splits its carrier fleet in two? In either area the US can send its full force and be up by two surface ships. If they go in where they have their LBA the US will have an advantage both day and night. This is exactly what I was saying, it simply allows the US to choose which battle they want to fight and win it. But what if at the end of turn three the US has lost five carriers, Japan has lost five carriers, and the port of Pearl Harbor is still US because the sea zone around Hawaii was neutral?

Even if Japan does control Hawaii and Japan and US each lost five carriers I would not say the game is over. US ships will simply enter the game at Somoa and the US can continue fighting.I think that something is being missed in these scenerios to takeboth Hawaii and Somoa and that is the objective involved. The US does not need to "win" the fleet battles. All the US needs to do is knock out the patrols and leave the zone neutral. Japan is then left with the dilemma of either patroling lightly to keep more raiders back to respond to US patrols, or patroling heavily and letting the US know where the majority of their fleet is in advance. If the US sees Japan putting patrols in Hawaii and Somoa then the wise move is for the US player to patrol very lightly and keep most of his strike force as raiders which will move only after he knows the position of every single Japanese ship!