‘Give Them Hell’: The US Navy’s Night Combat Doctrine and the Campaign for Guadalcanal

Abstract

Examinations of the US Navy’s tactical performance during the nocturnal engagements of the Guadalcanal campaign have largely ignored pre-war tactical developments, focusing instead on the details of the actions and extrapolating from their results to draw conclusions about the navy’s preparedness for war. This article adopts a different methodology, concentrating first on the pre-war preparations and then examining the night battles in light of the tactical doctrine the navy developed before the Second World War. The result is a comprehensive view of the navy’s night tactical doctrine, which provides the reasons for its successes and failures off Guadalcanal.