Re: Naval Night Combat. British vs Japanese

Originally Posted by
Carl Schwamberger
During the early years of WWII, particularly 1941 & 1942 both the Britsh and Japanese navy showed a lot of skill at night combat at sea. What were the differences in technique and skill between the two navys? I am not a expert on this subject and would appreciate any observations or opinions.
I'm no expert either and my little knowledge on this topic is mostly on the IJN at the policy and doctrinal rather than tactical level.
IJN doctrine and training emphasised night combat after the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922 put Japan in an inferior position vis a vis America and Britain.
Greater skill in night combat was seen in the IJN as helping to redress the imabalance in capital ships.
The general idea was to get in among an enemy fleet at night in the decisive battle and reduce it sufficiently, notably with superior Japanese torpedoes, that the IJN heavy forces could be brought in in daylight to finish off the enemy.
In practice the decisive battle never occurred, although Yamamoto was anticipitating it following Pearl Harbor and the IJN was still looking for it during 1943.
The IJN obsession with the decisive battle concept actually undermined the IJN's ability to fight a war which lacked the decisive battle. Partly this was because the IJN was structured around that concept, which goes back to the crushing victory over Russia at Tsushima in 1905, so that it was focused on battles rather than running a long war. Partly it was because the concept assumed that the engagement would occur in waters close to Japan where the enemy fleet would be drawn for the decisive battle. This resulted in the IJN fleet being structured on that basis so that, for example, they didn't have torpedo boats which would have been handy at Guadalcanal because the IJN had decided that torpedo boats couldn't operate in the large seas where the decisive battle was supposed to take place. Another consequence of the assumption about the location of the battle was that the IJN went into the war with hardly any ships with the range needed to fight a long war over a vast area. The Pearl Harbor fleet had to be refuelled at sea several times on the way there and back.
As the IJN was modelled on the RN and the RN was admired by the IJN until things soured around the time of the Washington Naval Treaty, it might be that RN skill in night engagements also influenced Japanese thinking, but this is just speculation.
One obvious difference at the tactical level is that the RN had radar and the IJN didn't, although the IJN had excellent optics.
I assume that after the Washington Treaty the IJN developed its tactics quite independently of the RN, but perhaps the IJN kept abreast of RN tactics.
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A rational army would run away.
Montesquieu
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