From the New York Times...
"There was no continuous nightly blackout in the wartime city. But blackout drills were held from time to time, mostly in the early years of the war, when there were fears that German bombers might appear overhead.
In spring 1942, the Army determined that the glow from New York City’s lights was silhouetting ships offshore, making them easy targets for German submarines that had sunk scores of oil tankers and freighters bound for Britain.
Under an Army-ordered “dimout” — less severe than a blackout — the brilliant neon advertising signs in Times Square went dark. Office buildings and apartment houses throughout the city were required to veil windows more than 15 stories high. Stores, restaurants and bars toned down their exterior lighting. Streetlights and traffic signals had their wattage reduced, and automobile headlights were hooded. Night baseball was banned in the war’s early years at the Dodgers’ Ebbets Field and the Giants’ Polo Grounds. (Yankee Stadium did not yet have lights.) The Statue of Liberty’s torch did not glow.
For all the fears of a bombing or U-boat attack, the only wartime devastation visited upon New York came on a Saturday in July 1945 when an unarmed Army bomber, lost in rain and fog on a routine flight, crashed into the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors, killing its 3 crew members and 11 people working at a Catholic war relief agency."
