The transient energy transfer during expansion of a plane layer of radiating gas bounded by a strong shock is investigated. The inviscid, nonconducting gas is assumed to be perfect and in local thermodynamic equilibrium. A shock fitting procedure is used which completely specifies the motion and position of the shock by an iterative solution of the partial differential equations and the Rankine‐Hugoniot shock boundary conditions. For a gray gas, results are presented for parameters of physical interest. Results obtained for transparent, gray, and nongray models are compared.