Could Germany have won WWII?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Why a nighttime setting? How would that have benefitted the Japanese Navy?

RS' suggested examples are good ones.

Summary: Better night optics (at least on the newer cruisers and the Yamato class) translating into a higher percentage of hits; better drill (they did more of their training at night and were less flustered by the inherent confusions of night actions); slightly higher ship speeds (making targeting harder at all times, but even more so at night with less visual sighting ability); equally accurate, longer ranged, and far more hard-hitting naval surface torpedoes. Night-time was the better time for torpedo attacks as the destroyers could close to optimal firing ranges without being spotted (daylight you can see what they're doing and adjust, at night you might not even see the destroyer before the attack had been launched -- especially with the LL torpedoes -- and if the first chance you have to evade is when you are spotting torp tracks visually at night....)

All of this changed when the USN drilled more for night actions and developed the 3rd and 4th generations of search and gunnery targeting radar. During the time frame RS and I are discussing, search radars were somewhat crude and targeting radars couldn't spot shot splash at enough distance or provide truly accurate angle of shot. In 1941 it didn't do much more than give a strong estimate as to distance of target.