Tassafaronga was a tactical coup without strategic rescue

A quotation from Terry Pratchett's Jingo supplies the episode's final strategic test: a badly outnumbered and outpositioned force can avoid defeat by not having the battle. Task Force 67 possessed more gun power, but only three leading destroyers could make effective use of radar and the expected illumination aircraft never joined the action. The Japanese destroyers were prepared for night torpedo warfare and launched forty-four weapons at cruisers maintaining predictable courses, whereas the Americans launched twenty after their own gunfire warned manoeuvring targets. The resulting exchange, one Japanese destroyer lost for one American heavy cruiser sunk and three badly damaged, fit Japan's decisive-battle expectations. Yet even a successful supply delivery could not have reversed the campaign ashore, so the tactical coup did not rescue the strategic commitment to Guadalcanal.