Give Credit Where It’s Due

[Talyn]

While the contributions U.S. codebreakers made to victory at Midway are well known, cryptanalysts played a similarly important—though less appreciated—role in determining Japanese intentions leading up to the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Give Credit Where It’s Due

U.S. codebreakers were key contributors to victory at Midway, but their vital role in the Battle of the Coral Sea is often overlooked.

www.usni.org

‘Scratch One Flattop’: SBD Dauntless dive bombers leave behind the sinking light carrier Sho‒ho‒, in Robert Taylor’s Battle of the Coral Sea. Despite U.S. codebreakers’ prebattle successes, an erroneous sighting report resulted in carrier planes attacking the Sho‒ho‒ instead of the higher-value main Japanese force.

 

[HansGruber]

An interesting thing about code breaking in the Pacific theater was how differently it was used compared to how it was used against the Germans.

When the German Enigma was broken, intelligence gathered was used very sparingly, only against important targets where there was another plausible reason for the Allies getting “lucky”, to prevent the Germans from figuring out Enigma was compromised. Many targets were passed over, which inevitably led to Allied casualties.

In the Pacific, it was the complete opposite. The Allies exploited every possible bit of information with no concern of revealing the source, knowing that the Japanese were incapable of believing that their codes had been broken.

 

[Lo-Profile]

Probably would have been much easier to break the Japanese codes if FDR wasn't more concerned with Japanese American citizens being illegally interned in his version of concentration camps

 

[HansGruber]

Probably would have been much easier to break the Japanese codes if FDR wasn't more concerned with Japanese American citizens being illegally interned in his version of concentration camps

The language wasn’t the barrier; the encryption was…and most Japanese codes were not terribly sophisticated (ironically, several Japanese business cyphers were a LOT harder to break than the ones used by the military).

No argument that what was done to the Nisei wasn’t criminal, though.