The intricacies of tradeoffs between WW2 ship classes could be argued, and was argued, for decades in books.
You’re correct that you can create a scenario where the carrier doesn’t always win, and in the confusion of ww2 sensors and communications those scenarios occasionally happened.
You’re correct that aerial weapons at the time were less effective against battleships.
I don’t think these exceptions change the basic idea that the chance of winning the pacific theater fleet battles is proportional to the number and effectiveness of the carrier launched aircraft you can field. So the total combat power of the USN in WW2 is mostly proportional to the carrier number, and the rate of increase is exactly the post overhang example asked for.
Note also overhang does not mean catch up. The timeline with an artificial pause always has less potential progress than the normal timeline.
The intricacies of tradeoffs between WW2 ship classes could be argued, and was argued, for decades in books.
You’re correct that you can create a scenario where the carrier doesn’t always win, and in the confusion of ww2 sensors and communications those scenarios occasionally happened.
You’re correct that aerial weapons at the time were less effective against battleships.
I don’t think these exceptions change the basic idea that the chance of winning the pacific theater fleet battles is proportional to the number and effectiveness of the carrier launched aircraft you can field. So the total combat power of the USN in WW2 is mostly proportional to the carrier number, and the rate of increase is exactly the post overhang example asked for.
Note also overhang does not mean catch up. The timeline with an artificial pause always has less potential progress than the normal timeline.