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Sitting down with Nimitz, Ghormley asked, “What did I do that was wrong?” Nimitz produced a sheaf of the dispatches Ghormley had sent him. Nimitz said that if things were as dire as the dispatches indicated, “we needed the very best man we had to hold down that critical area. And then I asked him whether he was that very best man.” Ghormley told Nimitz he could make no such claim.

Ghormley was a talented and decent man, but the war had outgrown his gifts. Writing Nimitz, Secretary Frank Knox was critical of the outgoing commander, referring to his “complete lack of offensive use of our surface craft until Norman Scott’s very successful raid north of Savo Island.” Knox thought the early days of the Pacific campaign resembled the start of the Civil War. “I presume most of us, if we had been required to choose at the beginning of the war between the brilliant, socially attractive McClellan and the rough, rather uncouth, unsocial Grant, would have chosen McClellan, just like Lincoln did.” As Ghormley’s staffer Charles W. Weaver would write, “When history is written, the good admiral will have his place in it, if the account faithfully records the true facts of the Admiral’s great burden in the early days of the Pacific War.”

The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

Operation Watchtower (As of October 18, 1942)

ADM ERNEST J. KING

Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet (COMINCH)

and Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)

ADM CHESTER W. NIMITZ

Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC)

VADM WILLIAM F. HALSEY, JR.

Commander, South Pacific Forces (COMSOPAC)

RADM RICHMOND KELLY TURNER

Commander, Expeditionary Force

Task Force 62 (later 67)

RADM AUBREY W. FITCH

Commander, Air (land-based), SOPAC

Task Force 63

RADM THOMAS C. KINKAID

TF 16 (Enterprise)

MGEN ALEXANDER A. VANDEGRIFT

Commander, 1st Marine Division

RADM GEORGE D. MURRAY

TF 17 (Hornet)

RADM WILLIS A. LEE

Task Force 64 (Washington)

RADM NORMAN SCOTT

Task Group 64.4 Cruiser Striking Force (later 67.4) (San Francisco)

As Ghormley returned to Pearl Harbor to take the post of commandant of the 14th Naval District in Hawaii, President Roosevelt was watching events in the South Pacific with something more than a commander in chief’s typical remove. After standing forcefully for the idea that aid to Russia was essential to defeating the Axis, and supporting a Europe-first strategy, his interest in the Solomons campaign was vigorous. His oldest son, James, was serving on Guadalcanal. Despite the potentially disqualifying handicap of being handed, at age twenty-eight, a reserve commission as a lieutenant colonel, which in time he rejected, Major James Roosevelt set himself to emulating the example of his father’s rough-riding fifth cousin. A capable and popular officer, he urged the creation of a new type of commando unit, Marine Raiders, which under the leadership of Evans Carlson and Merritt Edson would go on to distinguish themselves at Guadalcanal and elsewhere. James served as the executive officer of the 2nd Marine Raiders on Guadalcanal despite chronic physical ailments.

On October 24, FDR wrote to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “My anxiety about the Southwest Pacific is to make sure that every possible weapon gets into that area to hold Guadalcanal, and that, having held in this crisis, that munitions and planes and crews are on the way to take advantage of our success. We will soon find ourselves engaged in two active fronts and we must have adequate air support in both places, even though it means delay in our commitments, particularly to England. Our long-range plans could be set back for months if we failed to throw our full strength in our immediate and impending conflicts.”

Roosevelt’s urgent sense of events in the South Pacific developed not a moment too soon for King, Nimitz, and Halsey. On the very day he urged his Joint Chiefs to redirect their energies westward, and seven days into Halsey’s tenure in command of the theater, the Japanese turned loose what would be their most ferocious and concentrated attack yet