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Posted on 07/02/2002 7:35:52 AM PDT by FourPeas
'I could never say anything about this until a few years ago'
Monday, July 01, 2002By Jim Harger
The Grand Rapids Press
GRANDVILLE -- Robert Galt hasn't seen the latest Hollywood movies about World War II code breakers and "code talkers."
He doesn't need to.
The 82-year-old Grandville resident lived through the tense and shadowy plots that are second nature to high-tech eavesdropping.
"I could never say anything about this until a few years ago," said Galt, who was stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Base from 1943 until the end of the war.
"Nobody knew what I was doing."
Galt, who was a whiz at operating and repairing the IBM tabulators used to sort data on punchcards, was assigned to the top-secret unit that had broken the Japanese Imperial Navy's JN-25 military code used for its most secret communications.
He acquired his knowledge of the machines in civilian life by processing payrolls for his employer and was put through a basic training regime that included staying in the home of Tom Watson, the legendary architect of IBM's predominance in the computer industry.
When he arrived at Pearl Harbor, Galt's mission was to keep the machines running around the clock as the elite code breakers fed the machines stacks of punchcards they had developed to break the Japanese Navy's top secret dispatches.
They were stationed in air-conditioned rooms designed to keep the paper punchcards from absorbing moisture that might make the machines falter.
"They ran 24 hours a day, every day," Galt said of the tabulators.
"We were breaking the Japanese code faster than they could make it."
Not only did they break Japanese codes, they broke their allies' codes, he said.
"We were breaking everybody's code," he said.
Galt vividly recalls the night in April 1943 when their intercept station picked up a message indicating Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was planning to visit Japanese bases in the Solomon Islands.
The message, which included Yamamoto's schedule, put the vaunted naval strategist within range of U.S. fighters.
"We knew where he was going to be and we knew which plane he was going to be on," Galt said.
Hoping to hide their code-breaking prowess, a fighter squadron raid on Yamamoto's plane was carefully planned to look as if it were coincidental to his arrival, Galt said.
When the mission succeeded, "that was the beginning of the end of the war for the Japanese," Galt said. "He was so popular."
No one outside the group of code breakers knew what they were up to, Galt said.
Inside the group, everyone stuck around to find out whether the mission was a success.
"When they shot him down, they all cheered," he says. "I felt kind of funny about it because he was a good soldier."
Galt said he also was in the know when the military deployed the first atomic bombs. What few knew was that a single bomb was powerful enough to destroy a city.
"We knew it was a big bomb," he said. "All we knew was the plane could only carry one of them."
Looking back, Galt doesn't second-guess President Harry Truman's decision to drop the bomb. A land invasion of Japan would be terribly bloody.
"We had to change their minds about how they were going to die," he said.
After World War II, Galt returned to the United States, got married and rejoined the machinery company he left before he enlisted in the war.
However, he kept his top-secret clearances and remained active in the U.S. Naval Reserves for another 36 years. He was recalled to duty during the Korean War and briefly during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Galt spent most of his career around computers and the latest in technology, yet he is unplugged in retirement.
Though code breaking has become critical to intercepting the latest threats in the war on terrorism, Galt -- an avid swimmer -- is more interested in getting his backyard pool open.
He does not own a computer, and an e-mail machine foisted on them by a grandchild went back into the box months ago. A cell phone sits largely unused in his car's glove compartment.
"I don't want to have a computer," he said. "I wouldn't have time to sleep as long as I do."
Very well said.
/bad attempt at Randian humor
And, a very bad one indeed! :)
LOL
"We knew it was a big bomb," he said. "All we knew was the plane could only carry one of them."
Hard to understand how someone in Galt's position would have come to know this (unless it was from the deciphering of allied communications that Galt says he was involved in -- the Brits and the Russians may have discussed the atom bomb in their secret communications.)
He was the junior flight oficer on the Yamamoto mission. He flew top cover to engage the Zero escort. When the Zeros were beat off his wing man called for him to "follow me". They dove on the burning transport but it crashed into the jungle before they could open fire, (it was reported that Yamamoto's body was found strapped to his chair and he was still holding his Samurai sword). They returned to base. This mission accomplishment was attributed partly to Col Charles Lindburgh who had been training P-38 pilots in how to practice fuel management techniques. They could then stretch the combat range of the P-38 for long overwater flights!
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