Information Overload

Framing the Problem

The U.S. Navy entered World War II with two new technologies that appeared to offer a crucial advantage. One was radar, which gave the remarkable ability to detect approaching ships and planes. The other was very high frequency (VHF) radio, which allowed ships to communicate with each other in real-time without giving their position away. In theory, these two technologies would permit senior naval officers to rapidly develop situational awareness in combat situations and coordinate the ships under their command with unprecedented clarity. The advantages would be significant in daylight battles; at night, they were expected to be transformational. Unlike trained lookouts, radar could “see” in the dark.

In actual combat, these advantages proved elusive. When Allied forces invaded the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August 1942, they seized its airfield and triggered a lengthy attritional campaign. Possession of the airfield gave the Allies local aerial superiority. To avoid attacks from Allied planes, ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) came to the island at night. They regularly landed troops and supplies, shelled the airfield and its defenders, and fought to regain control of the island and its airfield. Five major night battles took place during the campaign. From the start, they illustrated the flaws in the U.S. Navy’s prewar expectations.

Rather than unlocking a new, transformational capability, the technologies made things worse. Radar signals reflected off nearby islands made it challenging to separate enemy ships from background echoes. Once a potential target was found, the captain had to choose whether to track it closely or continue scanning the surrounding area to maintain general situational awareness; early radars could not do both at the same time. Rather than clarifying the situation, VHF radio added to the confusion. Ship captains reported radar contacts to each other; task force commanders asked for clarification and regular updates. Radio circuits became so busy with this traffic that vital orders were lost or delayed, adding to the confusion. This prevented task force commanders from coordinating their forces in real-time.

In hindsight, the results were predictable, and the opposite of expectations. Radio and radar inundated ship captains and task force commanders with unprecedented levels of information. They were expected to absorb it all, assess it, understand its implications, and take decisive action. Instead, they were becoming increasingly confused and disoriented. Command functions broke down. Task forces intended to fight as coherent teams became individual ships struggling to survive in chaotic melees. Friendly fire wrecked several ships; enemy action destroyed many more. Samuel Eliot Morison, who wrote the history of U.S. naval operations in World War II, ably described the confusing nature of the fighting:

“A literally infernal scene presented itself to the participants. The struggle had deteriorated into a wild and desperate melee. The greenish light of suspended star shell dimmed the stars overhead. Elongated red and white trails of shell tracers arched and crisscrossed, magazines exploded in blinding bouquets of white flame, oil-fed conflagrations sent up twisted yellow columns. Dotting the horizon were the dull red glows of smoldering hulls, now obscured by dense masses of smoke, now blazing up when uncontrolled fires reached new combustibles. The sea itself, fouled with oil and flotsam, tortured by underwater upheavals, rose in geysers from shell explosions.” (1)

A better approach was needed. From the headquarters at Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet’s commander, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and his staff assessed action reports to understand why the U.S. Navy’s investment in technology was not delivering the expected results. The reports showed that ship captains and task force commanders could not interpret the incoming information fast enough to act on it.