Making a movie like this you pretty much are throwing reality out the window anyway so you might as well have fun with it.
That was the biggest disappointment with the original, it ended right when it was about to get interesting.
LOL, we all wanted to see the Nimitz give a great big huge bloody nose to the IJN fleet that launched those planes they saw on their way to Pearl Harbor...
Well...maybe an alternative ending might not be all that bad...:)