And.. what? abandon the 15000 troops to any roaming Soviet sub? The point of evacuating the troops from Korea (and probably Japan, too) would be to bring them back to the US where they can be useful; the point of the escort was to ensure that they get home. Hawaii, with its limited resources is not a useful for 15,000 troops. Disembarking 15,000 troops in a port in the NW (between SF and Seattle) is useful (IMHO).

Ships sitting in Guam, where its crews will eat from the even smaller amount of available food are not useful either, even it is US territory.

Uncle Ted

The point is to get the USN ships to a friendly port - i.e. conserve fuel by getting them to the nearest US port in US territory - then take the rest of the troops home with the remaining escorts

i.e. lets say there are ten destroyers and cruisers still afloat plus a BB

Use some of the fuel to get the BB, the cruisers and most of the DD's to Guam for instance - then the rest of the convoy with say 2-3 remaining DD's goes home - that way you arent abandoning ships that frankly the US wont be in a position to replace for a very long time in another country's ports

and a Korean Omega may actually be a series of steps - i.e. use what fuel is left to evacuate to Okinawa - for that short a distance you could even use sail or alcohol powered ships - at least that way the troops are no longer in Korea and in contact with the enemy - then evacuate from there - also given the state of the Soviet navy I have a feeling that there are no Soviet subs left

reason - if they had any nukes left they would have used them to take out the Virginia and get the satellite back - instead they sent a sail powered ship to try to do it using commandos

so at best you might be looking at diesel boats -and as low as fuel for all concerned if you can get past the Sea of Japan you are probably home free