Night combat

Officers find that darkness hampers many aspects of command, including their ability to preserve control, execute movement, firing, maintenance of direction, reconnaissance, security, and mutual support.

Such uncertainty is associated with feelings of loneliness and helplessness, and creates a tendency to overestimate enemy strength or be excessively pessimistic of the combat situation.

Usually due to the massive nature of the battles, they could not be resolved in one day, and combat could not be cleanly disengaged as darkness fell, or prevented as armies camped near each other overnight.

Ancient historian Diodorus claims that at the Battle of Thermopylae the Spartans attempted to assassinate Persian King Xerxes by infiltrating his camp at night.

The Spartans being unable to find the king, marched uncontrolled through the whole camp, killing and overthrowing all that stood in their way, like men who knew that they fought, not with the hope of victory, but to avenge their own deaths.

"[6]At the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, over a period of 3 days, an alliance of Germanic tribes wore down and eventually annihilated 3 Roman legions (about 16,000 to 20,000 men).

The night before the battle proper, one of the Roman allied forces stumbled on a band of Hunnic troops and in the resulting skirmish, as many as 30,000 (unverified) men were killed.

Later in the battle, Thorismund, son of king Theodoric, accidentally walked into Attila the Hun's encampment while attempting to return to his own forces at night.

Vlad reportedly disguised himself as a Turk and walked freely throughout the Ottoman camp in an effort to find Mehmed's tent and learn about the organization of his army.

In anticipation of a conflict with the Soviet Union, whose numbers of tanks, planes, and artillery were vastly superior, the Japanese developed a series of training manuals designed to counter these advantages.

[4] Another type of illumination device was the tripflare, consisting of a pyrotechnic instrument activated by tripwire, planted near trails to provide early warning of enemy movement.

[8] In the First Battle of al-Faw in 1986, during the late stages of the Iran–Iraq War, one of the elements that contributed to the success of Iranians was their use of dug-in infantry which would move only at night and during poor weather.

Combat continued at night is aimed at exploiting an advantage gained from an attack during the day or similarly denying the defending force the opportunity to regroup or reinforce.

Combat initiated at night can either be aimed to gain an advantage (such as territory or prisoners) which is then held during the following day or to harass and demoralize the enemy before disengaging prior to sunrise.

[citation needed] Historically, night combat involves greater risk and reward compared to similar battles in the daytime.