Japanese communications kept referring to a location code-named "AF." The Navy guessed it was Midway, but it had to be sure. To find out, Navy Com. Joseph J. Rochefort, a code breaker, suggested a ruse. Midway was instructed to issue an emergency call in plain English saying that its water distillation plant had broken down. The report was duly picked up by enemy eavesdroppers, who radioed superiors that "AF" was running short of water, according to Costello.Converted for the Web from: Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II - Originally published: 2000 Stephen Budiansky
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.