The “runway lights” (like for night landings), that is. I know systems like the Optical Landing Systems (the “meatball”) weren’t developed until after the war.
I can find information on modern angled-deck carrier lighting schemes well enough, but I’m hard pressed to find information on lighting setups from carriers during the war. It actually took a little work to find a clear reference to them HAVING night lighting—and that was just on one, American, carrier. I don’t know what the system used in the other navies that used carriers (essentially just Britain and Japan).
In general WWII carriers just did not do night landings.
At least, they tried hard to avoid them, by timing their locations to be in daytime. (Sometimes they would have night time (pre-dawn) takeoffs, but by the time the planes returned it would be light out.)
There were 2 reasons for avoiding them:[ul]
[li]Accidents were much more common at night. Both to the planes & pilots, and to flight deck workers.[/li][li]Night landings meant that the planes would have been attacking at night or at best dusk. Carrier planes were much less effective in the dark, when it was much harder to see the enemy they were attacking.[/li][/ul]
Just to solidify what t-bonham said, read the story of Dick Tripp, who was regarded as the Yorktown’s best Landing Signal Officer. During one late afternoon battle, their task group lost 20 planes sinking the Japanese carrier Hiyo and 72 planes just trying to land after dark.
Another unrelated anecdotal story on night landings here.
That article gave me a couple of clues to almost exactly what I was looking for—a description of the (admittedly inadequate!) lighting setup, on the Midway and Commencement Bay classes. “Dust pan lights” on the deck edge, and red centerline lights—which were dim to begin with, AND turned off when there was a submarine threat.
I founs a reference to Royal Navy Escort Carriers fitted with floodlights for night ops, HMS Campania. Although this was towards the end of the war so the sub threat was diminished and it was more important to get planes down safely than stay stealthy.
Don’t know if it’s the same incident, but Admiral Marc Mitscher risked night landings with a late strike on the enemy during the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and famously turned on the deck lights when the planes returned to land in darkness. This was hardly ever done in wartime, for fear of submarines – it was usually rationalized that the loss of pilots and aircraft was a necessary sacrifice to protect the all-important carriers. Mitscher broke with conventional wisdom and risked his carriers (admittedly the Japanese were on the ropes at that point), forever earning the gratitude of his flight crews. Although a large number of planes were lost, only two aviators were killed in the extremely risky operation.
