[madison10]

Maybe the ships would have been fully manned and guns pointed at the Japanese air force. Not really much against torpedoes.

[RayChuang88]

If they had taken the warning seriously, there would be a lot of P-36's and P-40's in the air taking on the Japanese attacking force. The result: the Japanese would have lost 35-40% of their attacking force, but enough planes would have survived to still potentially cause a lot of damage, but with the AA guns on full alert a lot of Aichi D3A Val and Nakajima B5N Nate attack planes would have been lost trying to press home their attacks.

[Tallguy]

That’s about it. Takes a lot of time to lite off boilers on those old steam plants. Nevada got underway, but beached for fear of blocking the main channel.

The Japanese pilots would have sunk them in deep water where no salvage would have been possible.