Bill Murray posed an interesting question in another thread regarding Frank Fletcher's decision to stop and refuel the Wake Island relief force enroute to Wake.

Bill's comments made me wonder whether the effort to reinforce Wake Island would have been sufficient to allow the US to hold Wake had the US reinforcements arrived at Wake before the Japanese returned.

I recently saw the first-rate documentary Wake Island: Alamo of the Pacific on the History Channel. According to the documentary, the relief force included another 400 Marines and one squadron of fighters for the airstrip on Wake.

The Marines on Wake could have held out longer than they did since they were ordered to surrender at a time when they had the upper hand in the fighting on the atoll, but the Marine veterans interviewed in the documentary all agreed they they could not have held out indefinitely.

The additional 400 Marines and the fighter squadron, along with extra supplies and ammunition, would certainly have allowed Wake Island, which is closer to Japan than it is to Pearl Harbor, to have held out longer. The limited number of reinforcements would not have been enough to have made Wake Island impregnable given its location, however.

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Well, let me amend the question I posed on the earlier thread. It wasn't so much a question of why he stopped to refuel, it would more be that if he felt he had to refuel, why he didn't do it the day before when he had calm seas and a steady wind. This would have allowed him to make a better progress toward Wake Island than as to the next day when the winds and seas forced him to turn away to affect the refueling. As to Deep's question, I think it is unlikely that the relief could have held off a truely determined effort on the part of the Japanese to take the island, but the extra supplies, Marines, and possible addition of one of the carriers squadrons along with VMF-211 to reinforce to islands air force would surely have cost the Japanese a good deal more to take it. Another question in regard to Wake Island would be why the two submarines Tambor and Triton, which were in the area, did not make a more determined effort to get into the battle and maybe take out a transport or two which would have given the Marines on Wake a much needed help.

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Bill Murray
Why do we press harder on the remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?

I really don't think in the long run it would have mattered. Wake was too exposed to be truly adequitely defended. Also, it really wasn't necessary as a base. It lacked a good harbor and hadn't the room for really large airfields. Supplying any sizable force there would have been difficult at best early in the war for any length of time.
A time honored axiom of military strategy is: "Never reinforce defeat." I really think this applies here.
Of course, none of this takes anything from the heroic efforts that the defenders originally made. They certainly made the Japanese pay full price for that small spit of sand and coconut palm.