Totally sounds like No One/Everyone was in charge. Suggestions from everywhere, threats, temporary positions, replacements, conglomerated forces, no one knows where anyone is, what they're doing (for sure), where they're going, or when, and of course the best part is......there's No One to take the blame. Ping Pong responsibility, how PC.
Why did they all go ? Fishing trip ?
This "Cluster" needs to sit as underwriters for insurance companies for driver liability. They can prove it never happened, and they never existed, and it's your fault.
Double distance? What island, where, and why? Double what? 1+1=2
King, Fletcher, Pye, and "Kimmels" staff.....pick a commander? Who?
The one to the South with Lexington was to divert that second Japanese battle group on purpose, not to fight....to bait them. They did not wait for them.
Running out of fuel IS stupid, as IS leaving unfueled.
So Pye was being micro-managed by everyone? No hope (of total victory) and no choice (he could make by himself)(except suicide, or a make it look good (total waste/failure)?
Pye = Pye's plan/people not the human body. It appears many names controlled this pleasure cruise, and only one got the blame?
Of course Nimitz was the "Big" boy, and everyone was his subordinate. Only in ancient armies was being subordinate/in-charge not passed back and forth. Back then he either had to die or be murdered.
Even the 4-stackers (Clemsons) had a 3,000 mi. radius, before emergency war act which would've increased their range by 41%.
Sound an awful lot like Pye was chumped into being responsible for a micro-managed, threat laden, No-Win situation.
Bottom line.....it accomplished nothing, and no one is responsible. Act of God?
one version
Nadir of the Navy: Operations to Relief Wake Island, December 1941
another
Wake Island: Dec. 7-23, 1941