​​​​​​​ The disaster at Savo Island was a profound shock all the way up the chain of command to President Roosevelt, and a huge embarrassment to Navy leadership. With the loss of over 1,000 Sailors, it is considered the worst wartime defeat in U.S. naval history, since technically the U.S. was not formally at war for Pearl Harbor. CNO King directed that details of the battle be withheld from the public, casualty notification substantially delayed, and wartime censorship enabled him to do so. Many of the details remained wrapped in secrecy even many years after the war. The board of inquiry found lots of blame to go around, but no one in particular to pin it on. The only officer to receive formal censure was Captain Bode of Chicago, and he killed himself before it was officially delivered. Captain Riefkol, commander of Vincennes and the Northern Group of cruisers, was not censured, but never held command at sea again.

In his commentary to the inquiry, Admiral Turner ascribed the defeat to a “fatal lethargy of mind” and to over-confidence. The officers and men of the U.S. Navy were convinced of their superiority to the Japanese. Pearl Harbor was not considered a fair fight, and no one expected the outnumbered and mostly antiquated U.S. Asiatic Fleet to last for long. However, Midway seemed to have shown that even outnumbered, but absent Japanese perfidy, the U.S. Navy would triumph, and in any even fight U.S. victory would be inevitable. Savo Island proved otherwise and it was a bitter lesson for the U.S. Navy to swallow. An exhaustive post-war analysis of the battle by the U.S. Naval War College listed 26 enduring lessons-learned, most of which still resonate today and are worth a read.