Operation Shoestring

From Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal by James D. Hornfischer.

But logistics were as important as firepower. As General Dwight D. Eisenhower huddled with his staff in London planning the North Africa landings, half a world away, in Auckland, General Vandegrift was figuring out how to get his ships loaded with men, arms, and two months of supplies, plan landings on a hostile and deeply unfamiliar beach, issue operational orders to his field commanders, and run dress rehearsals. The pressure on American planners to allocate scarce resources effectively was immense worldwide. What little cargo and tanker capacity could be thrown into the southern Solomons operation was a zero-sum deduction from the strength of the Atlantic convoys that kept Great Britain going. In both theaters, the Mediterranean and the South Pacific, America would proceed on a shoestring, and that name, Operation Shoestring, would emerge as Nimitz’s joking moniker for the Guadalcanal operation, even as the invasion fleet was being marshaled toward its faraway goal.