The whole carrier air group trains for night war

The goal extended across the whole air group: every aircraft type, aircrew specialty, carrier lighting system, and recovery procedure had to work after dark. Henderson used senior naval observers as de facto air-group commanders because their appointments remained under naval control. Night competence offered an offset against numerically superior opponents by letting the Royal Navy choose when to strike. The institutional drive also answered Jutland's enduring lesson that a fleet unable to fight at night might lose contact with its enemy. Reaching fleet-wide competence by the early 1930s took roughly fifteen years of investment, exercises, training, and ship modification.