Fletcher was timid? Wow, I never knew that!
Altho Fletcher was pretty much to blame for the losses at Savo, Adm. McCain took the blame. In Sept of '42 Nimitz had enough of Fletcher and relieve him with Halsey. McCain was also sent back to Washington to "fly a desk", as Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics. Adm. Finch took over McCain's command of the South Pacific Air Forces. Adm. Ghormley was another "timid" commander. Nimitz finally ordered Ghormley to "put the fleet at risk, and stop pu$$y-footing and fight".
All this time the Japanese we reinforcing Guadalcanal by destroyer-transports, landing troops by the thousands.
The big problem, in the early part of the war in the Pacific, was most of the admirals had been battleship or cruiser CO's, and thought
big guns were better than aircraft carriers with their puny dive bombers and torpedo planes. Halsey realized the age of the carrier had
come, and the battleships and cruisers were secondary.
The book ends with the Japanese sucessfully evacuating about 12,000 troops from Guadalcanal. Unfortunately they left 24,000
Japanese soldiers and sailors on the island, in graves.
Charles