Breaking the U.S. Navy’s ’Gun Club’ Mentality in the South Pacific

In the 1920s and 1930s U.S. naval planners expected that a war against Japan would involve a grand, daylight fleet engagement that would be dominated by large caliber gunfire. When war broke out and American admirals found themselves fighting small-scale nighttime battles in the confined waters of the Solomon Sea in late 1942, they chose to employ their gun-oriented daytime tactics, resulting in numerous tactical defeats. Not until U.S. commanders learned to respect the power of the surface-launched torpedo—both as an offensive weapon and as a threat to be guarded against—would the U.S. Navy enjoy success in nighttime combat.