That would be Henderson Field.
In the earliest stage of the Guadalcanal campaign the IJN sank 4 cruisers in the battle of Savo Island with no losses. The USN withdrew all shipping, combat and support and left the marines to forage abandoned japanese supplies for food for months.
Other major sea battles followed and the US lost more cruisers and 2 carries in addition to destroyers. The japanese did most of their attacking at night because they trained for it. We had the advantage of radar and totally misused it for most of the battles.
The japanese did retire out of range of Henderson during the day and most of their shipping losses were due to air attack. That sounds more tactical, not timid to me.
An excellent book on this subject is “Neptune’s Inferno” by James D. Hornfischer.
Our navy was fighting the Japanese navy on somewhat of a par or disadvantage, and we weren’t nearly as well trained as they were at that point, and we had many lessons to learn. We had to learn that you couldn’t have nice, overstuffed couches in your wardrooms and 15 layers of paint on the vessels, because that stuff would burn and the smoke would kill everyone, so we spent the next year throwing those couches over the side and chipping all the paint off the ships.
The other lessons we had to learn were tactical (regarding use of torpedoes by the enemy, the capability of those torpedoes, and the concept of night engagements.
We had radar, but had almost no idea what worked, what didn’t, and how to employ it. It was largely mistrusted by many commanders then in battle, and Admiral Willis ‘Ching’ Lee was one of the first commanders who had a full understanding of radar, what it was good for, and how to employ it. He nearly single-handedly brought radar guided gunfire into modern naval warfare and once we saw what it could do, we rapidly learned how to employ it.
A fascinating, yet bloody time. Most people don’t know that, for every marine or soldier killed in land fighting during the Solomons Campaign, three sailors were killed. A terrible time, indeed.
But we learned from it, and the Japanese didn’t.