Note: this topic is from . Thanks DUMBGRUNT.
Posted on 06/05/2017 4:00:36 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
... an intriguing side story: "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea."
It was a fascinating, and detailed, description of much of what American intelligence knew beforehand of the enemy's fleet and plans. Indeed, it was too detailed.
The report - 14 paragraphs long - suggested a secret U.S. intelligence coup, and became one of the biggest and potentially damaging news leaks of World War II.
"This is the only time in American history that the United States government has ... taken steps toward prosecuting a member of the media under the Espionage Act,"
The story went on to describe the three parts of the planned Japanese attack: a striking force, a support force and an occupation force. It detailed how many ships were involved, and named the ships and their types.
Johnston landed in San Diego on June 2, and was in Chicago on June 4. When he heard about the unfolding battle, he told his editor he had some "dope" on the Japanese fleet, according to a 1942 report to the Navy and the Justice Department by former U.S. attorney general William D. Mitchell, who was handling the investigation.
Carlson said Johnston's story did not help the Japanese. "They never heard of the article," he said. The Japanese did soon change their code, but not because of the leak. They changed it because it was due to be changed."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
They also... some of them... loved Hitler, namely “Time Magazine” which put him on their cover twice.
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/17/us/officer-who-broke-japanese-war-codes-gets-belated-honor.html?pagewanted=all
Forty-three years after Joseph J. Rochefort broke the Japanese code that helped the United States win the Battle of Midway, the former naval officer is to be awarded the Distinguished Service Medal…
Military and civilian historians say the Navy’s decision to award the medal, one of the highest honors available to a noncombatant, will help rectify a longstanding wrong….
Beyond that, however, they say the award has helped bring to light the bitter feuding within the Navy’s World War II intelligence operations.
‘’Not only was Captain Rochefort removed from his intelligence command in Pearl Harbor soon after the Battle of Midway,’’ said Capt. Roger Pineau, the well-known naval historian, ‘’but the Washington intelligence community, which was wrong about the time and place the Japanese would strike after Pearl Harbor, tried to take credit for Rochefort’s code breaks and accurate intelligence evaluation of Japanese objectives.’’...
‘’He was a Japanese linguist, an intelligence analyst and a cryptologist, all the skills that enabled him to bring together the missing bits and pieces,’’ said Rear Adm. Donald M. Showers, who worked for Captain Rochefort in 1942 and who successfully petitioned for the Distinguished Service Medal on his behalf….
Forecasting an Invasion
Their efforts paid off in late May 1942 when, in translating the latest Japanese naval code, the Rochefort team succeeded - despite claims from Washington intelligence officials that it could not be done - in cracking the codes revealing the time, date and place of the planned invasion of Midway Island.
Washington, by contrast, had said the target was likely to be Johnston Island or the West Coast of the United States, and later than the date of the actual attack….
‘’To award Rochefort the medal would amount to an admission that Washington had committed an intelligence blunder.’...
’’Somebody sure as hell did Rochefort in, because he was yanked out of there.’’…
He was ‘’speared like a frog,’’ the authors say, ‘’and hung out to dry for the rest of the war when he could have done so much more to help us win it.’’...
In 1958, Admiral Nimitz again took up the Rochefort cause, sending a two-page, handwritten letter to the Secretary of the Navy. That request was also denied, on the ground that awards for action in World War II had been closed…
cites Captain Rochefort’s ‘’exceptional meritorious service.’’
It says the intelligence information on Japanese naval plans and intentions that the Rochefort unit provided ‘’served as the singular basis for the fleet commander in chief to plan his defenses, deploy his limited forces and devise strategy to insure U.S. Navy success in engaging the Japanese forces at Midway.’’
More here
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3557731/posts?page=1
“He was ‘’speared like a frog,’’ “
We see the same happening to many good men today.
I read of U.S. bomber pilots in 1940 Philippines reading a TIME magazine article that showed all the blind spots (arcs of fire) on the “new” B-17 bomber. They said that since their copy reached the Philippines, the Japanese sure as Hell had one also.
That’s similar to a news item bragging that the Japs couldn’t sink our subs because they set their depth charges too shallow. The Japanese evidently read the article and reset the depth - and we started losing boats. I understand that’s where the moniker “Silent Service” (STFU) came from.
Face is so important in Asian countries. It would not do to tell someone they had not, in fact, created an unbreakable code.
Note: this topic is from . Thanks DUMBGRUNT.
The Big Leak
“So big was the leak that it might have caused us to lose World War II. So mysterious is the identity of the leaker that we can’t be sure to this day who it was…or at least not entirely sure.”
Blazoned in huge black letters across page one of the December 4, 1941, issue of the Chicago Tribune was the headline: F.D.R.’S WAR PLANS! The Times Herald, the Tribune ’s Washington, D.C., ally, carried a similarly fevered banner. In both papers Chesly Manly, the Tribune’s Washington correspondent, revealed what President Franklin D. Roosevelt had repeatedly denied: that he was planning to lead the United States into war against Germany. The source of the reporter’s information was no less than a verbatim copy of Rainbow Five, the top-secret war plan drawn up at FDR’s order by the Joint Board of the Army and Navy.
Manly’s story even contained a copy of the President’s letter ordering the preparation of the plan. The reporter informed the Tribune and Times Herald readers that Rainbow Five called for the creation of a ten-million-man army, including an expeditionary force of five million men that would invade Europe to defeat Hitler. To all appearances the story was an enormous embarrassment to a President who when he ran for a third term in 1940 had vowed that he would never send American boys to fight in a foreign war...more at the link:
https://www.americanheritage.com/big-leak
Loose lips sink ships and all.
I can remember my granddad and mother saying this when I wasn’t even a teen and afterwards.
“The media has been anti-American (i.e., anti-conservative, anti-Christian, anti-nationalist, anti-liberty) since at least the 1930s.
They loved Stalin, an overt communist, and Roosevelt, a covert communist.”
“But in every case the Japanese concluded since their code was unbreakable it couldn’t have been code breaking. So, they blamed their disasters on spies, bad luck, anything other than American intelligence reading their radio traffic.”
The Brits did the same to the German codes and keep their successes quiet for decades. The Nazis never figured it out.
I seem to recall that the Brits would let German flights in over England every once in awhile so the Germans wouldn’t think that the radar was working. Radar was brand new at the time.
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