Fighting in the Dark: Naval Combat at Night: 1904-1945

Before the twentieth century ships when relied upon visual signaling, vessels beyond range of sight or a cannon shot, were blind, deaf, and dumb in the dark, making night battles at sea rare, and near always accidental. The introduction of certain technologies like the torpedo, the searchlight, radio and then radar, transformed naval warfare by making night combat feasible and, in some cases, desirable. The process by which navies integrated these new tools of war and turned the dark into a medium for effective combat, however, was long and difficult.

Fighting in the Dark tells the story of surface naval combat at night from the Russo-Japanese War through World War II. The book is about the process of confronting and mastering problems brought on by technological change during war. It does this by examining seven periods focusing on the Imperial Russian Navy in 1904-1905, the Imperial German Navy from 1914-1918, the Royal Navy from 1916-1939, the Regia Marina from 1940-1943, the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1942, the U.S. Navy in 1943-1944, and the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy from 1943-1944.The chapters are written by authors hailing from Australia, Canada, Italy, and the United States, all recognized masters in their subject.

Vincent P. O’Hara is an independent naval historian and a Naval Institute Press author of the year. Mr. O’Hara has published sixteen books, most recently, Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars (with Leonard Heinz, Naval Institute 2022). He holds a history degree from the University of California, Berkeley and lives in Chula Vista, California.

Trent Hone is an authority on the U.S. Navy of the early twentieth century and a leader in the application of complexity science to organizational design. He studied religion and archaeology at Carleton College in Northfield, MN and works as a consultant helping organizations learn and innovate more rapidly. Mr. Hone regularly writes and speaks about leadership, organizational learning, and naval history.  His most recent book is Mastering the Art of Command: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific (Naval Institute 2022).