The War of the Worlds in night-fighting thought

Before the First World War, a group of Royal Navy officers including the Third Sea Lord examined night action as an offset when political spending or local circumstances left British forces outnumbered. Their papers even drew on the science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds. Fiction was already feeding into military thought in the early 1900s. Interest in night fighting appears to have been concentrated among particular officers, with Fisher less central than his reputation might suggest. Jellicoe had some exposure to the ideas, but the more committed night-fighting elements were at the wrong end of the line during Jutland. The uneven spread of these ideas helps explain why experimentation did not produce consistent practice in battle.