Posted on 05/30/2019 10:51:57 AM PDT by llevrok
Wasn’t necessarily responding to you as an individual. Just using your comment as an opener to a wider discussion. Yeah, the Navaho, and the Marine colonel who was credited as the founder of the program, got a lot of publicity. I guess ‘publicity’ goes hand-in-hand with the USMC, but there was a substantial push from Hollywood.
The language is only the first hurdle.
The code talkers talked in code in their language, too.
An airplane might be called a feather, or who knows.
The guy you were talking to knew the code, but
a non-trained Navajo still wouldn’t get what was being said.
Yep. I know. But first-hand knowledge of the language would be necessary to figuring out the code. It really was an ingenious thing to do. I imagine our Russkie opponents are making use of their obscure indigenous languages in much the same way.
The army used Choctaw “Code Talkers” in WWI. The “front lines” were very fluid and each time the Germans took ground they “tapped” the telephone lines and made sure they could listen to Allied telephone conversations if and when they were driven back and the Allies retook those trenches. The Allies knew this but telephone lines got so impossibly buried by artillery barrages and the ever present mud that running the lines just wasn’t possible.
Late in 1918, an American officer overheard his Choctaw troops talking amongst themselves and realized that if he couldn’t understand what they were saying, then neither could the Huns, so he put them to work as telephone operators. After that the Germans began actually being surprised by Allied surprise attacks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_code_talkers
RIP
Thank you for your service. A true hero.
Btw, usually BREVITY is very important in military communications but in WWI the Choctaws were told to have friendly chit-chat with their fellows, as it was determined that an important message inside a seemingly meaningless conversation between 2 friends would never be understood by listeners.
Yours, TMN78247
Btw, usually BREVITY is very important in military communications but in WWI the Choctaws were told to have friendly chit-chat with their fellows, as it was determined that an important message inside a seemingly meaningless conversation between 2 friends would never be understood by listeners.
Yours, TMN78247
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