Next Arthur Elliot karlsty talks about the key role played by the u. S. During the battle. Its about 45 minutes. Well, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Before i introduce our next speaker, its a privilege and an honor to announce we actually have a battle of midway veteran in the audience today. Id like him to be stand and be recognized. Captain dexter rumsy flew out of shoals, about 45 minutes west of shoals during the battle. Captain rumsey everyone. [ applause ] thank you for your service. Elliot carlson is a long time journalist who has worked as a reporter, editor, and staff writer for such newspapers and magazines as the honolulu advertiser and news week. Hes the author of the oddsy of the code breaker who outwitted yamamoto at midway. Its the author carlson describes as the most consequential author. He also tells us the information gathering on pearl harbor was actually the work of many individuals and to discuss these individuals who changed the course of history, please welcome elliot carlson. [ applause ] good morning. Good morning. I want to thank the sponsors for having me in today. Appreciate it. Want to thank you all for coming, and i want to quickly honor officer rumsey. What was your rank, sir . [ inaudible ]. Okay. So very much very honored to have you here in the audience. Thank you. My theme today, midway and code breaking might need a bit of an explanation. It suggests there was a time before midway when he was not of age. And this might seem odd because the art of sis, the art of decipherering code as a long history. It goes back to the romans. The british navy stymied the german fleet using code breaking. But on the eve of world war ii, as practiced by the American Army and navy, criptnalysis was yes, sir . You want me closer to the mic micropho microphone . Okay. Im going to bloom it out. The American Military had barely entered the crypt logic arena no more than 12 years earlier. Is that better . And for many officers, admirals, generals, this activity was new. It was not only new, it was strange and a little fuzzy. And a lot of them regarded it as a kind of novelty, an activity that would probably never yield timely intelligence in a combat situation. So cryptal sis was not really much of a magnet for ambitious young officers. Excuse me. In fact, the field was considered a career killer and only a few souls wanted to have anything to do with it. The way to get ahead in the navy was to join the gun club, adopt a specialty in gunnery and that was the way to arise in the navy. Code breakers reputation of cryptal sis wasnt helped by the attack on pearl harbor. A lot of the skeptics wondered why this new science hadnt provided a better warning. So cryptal sis entered world war ii pretty much under a cloud. Code breakers had staggering problems of their own besides their reputation. Their big problem was that there wasnt enough of them. Both services had two few trained analysts. The navy did have around 50 in its washington office, but a lot of them were detailed to work on various codes, diplomatic codes, the german enigma code, only a tiny handful worked on the imperil Navy Operational codes. And this small group was supplemented by 21 analysts scattered across the pacific in the navy two field stations at pearl harbor and manila and this small man was charged with shadowing the entire japanese navy. It must be said they did an amazing job. They did catch a few breaks. Walter bornman was talking about the early reigns in the gilbert and Marshall Islands and the solomons. Well, code breakers cant break codes unless they have intercepts, lots of issues to work with and those raids generated zillions of imperil navy intercepts. Soon they had more than they knew what to do with and that showed in the results that came later, when a japanese squadran was spotted headed to the Southern Coast of new guinea. It was tracked by analysts at pearl harbor and in milburn, austral australia. So admiral nimtz now had information and he sent the carriers lexington and north ton to that region to thwart that advance and the resulting action, about which we heard earlier, was really the first major setback for the imperil navy. Its been called a draw, i think that i would say it was a tactical draw or a tactical thing for the japanese. But the japanese werent able to proceed with their mission. But it was at midway a month later on june 4 where code analysis comes into its own. In the words of a his torn, midway is one of those cases when intelligence strikes like lightening. At midway, analysts demonstrated their ability to affect the outcome of a fateful came pain. Midway was the crucial battle of the pacific war, nimtz said. That engagement made Everything Else possible. I think it is no exaggeration to say that aside from the battle of the coral sea, the battle of midway was the only campaign of the pacific war in which code breaking was so fundamental to the event that if there had been no code breaking, there would have been no battle. The battle could not have happened without it. Without code breaking, june 4 would have been a very different day than the day that history recorded. True, some things would have been the same. The Japanese Striking force, with its four fast carriers, would still have converged on midway. But the three years mitt had available would not have been there. I dont recollecttown would have been 3,000 miles away, gets repairs from scars sustained in the coral sea. Enterprise and hornet would have been 4,000 miles away on station in the coral sea and that is where admiral king wanted them to be to give protection to australian. Australia had been asking pleading with king that they needed extra protection from the japanese fleet. And the australians were worried about the japanese navy. So you had those three carriers all in the wrong place. There were no carriers in the central pacific. So both those carriers, the hornet and the enterprise, cruised in the coral sea on may 16. But just 17 days later, moving at breakneck speed by navy standards, all three carriers, including yorktown showed up at point luck. What caused nimtz to act so quickly was a single message, a single transmission from an imperil Navy Headquarters to a japanese transport ship resting in the marshals. And it was asked to go to saipan, pick up supplies and proceed to a place called a. F. Ill talk more about a. F. Later. That dispatch that was pitched up by radio men on owahu left no doubts in nimtz mind that the japanese planned to inside and occupy midway. Now, general george marshal, the armys chief of staff, said the closest squeak and the greatest victory in the pacific was at midway. Marshals appraisal of midway is now widely accepted. What isnt so well known is that lightening almost didnt strike on june 4. The battle as we know it almost didnt happen. Marshal called midway a close squeak, but it wasnt only a close squeak in the waters near midway. It was also a close squeak in washington with army and navy chief tons couldnt agree among themselves where the japanese would strike their blow and they disputed and rejected nimtz estimate. Nimtz at first was unphased by this squabble. He felt comfortable with his order because the information he acted upon had been conveyed by a source that he had learned to trust. And this source was a prickly and sometimes different officer. He is easily the pivotal character of this story. He was an unusual officer. Unlike most officers occupying positions of responsibility in the navy, he had not been to the naval academy. He had come up from unlisted ranks and this made him somewhat of an oddity in the navys culture. The historian described him as causic, witty, unorthodox, intimate and brilliant. Quirkily as he may have been, the faith in this officer was well placed. He had been a pioneer in navy cryptology. He joined something then called the research desk. It was intended the word was intended to disguise one of the navys knnewest activities at tt time, code breaking. Excuse me a minute. When the founder of the research de desk, a cryptology genius, seeded, rochford obtained his job. So with only a couple months of training you arent his belt, he found himself running the navys code breaking arm. It consisted of five people, one officer, himself and four civilians. Now, happily, one of those civilians was an experienced cryptology analyst. The brilliant and somewhat haughty agnus. He tutored them in the field. They worked together a lot for about a year and a half or two years, and they did actually working together compromise at least one imperil navy code. Mrs. Aggie went on to become one of the navys cryptology teachers and joe went to japan. He was ordered there by Naval Intelligence to learn the language and familiarize himself with the culture and the people of japan and staying there three years, thats what he did. So in the spring of 1941 with war looking more likely in the far east, rochfords training in japanese came in handy. His old boss now ran something call called an expansion of the old research desk. It was a new version of the navys original code breaking arm. Stafford wanted rochford to run the field station. He took the job and gained fame as station hypo. He did not personally break Imperial Navy codes or at least he didnt do it by himself. He had a lot of help. He used his expertise in the language and cryptology to lead the team that did most of that work. His outfit consisted of about a small core of two dozen officers, enlisted men. These gentlemen were a mottly crew, a mix of cryptology analysts, ma analysts,. They were people who will not generally conform to accepted ideas. Rochford meant this as a compliment. He said if you desire to be a great cryptology analyst, being a little nuts helped. They did work in a dreary place, a drab building in the basement of the navys pearl harbor. This is what it looked like in 1942 and this is what it looks like today. Whoops. Got ahead of myself there. That little space there is the door that led down to this work area, this basement work area. This is the staircase that led down to it, and it was usually full of burn bags from discarded intercepts, worksheets. So getting down there was kind of a trial, not an inspiring place and because he wouldnt allow photographers down there for security reasons, all we have is the artists conception. The basement was a fairly spacious, about the size of a large pool hall, but it had some drawbacks. The airconditioner either worked excessively or didnt work at all, so you were either hot or too cold and you sometimes froze your bones off and the men down there called that place the dungeon. His characters excuse me a little bit. I got a little bit ahead of myself. We have one other idea of that world. I must share it with you. It comes by way of hollywood. In the 1976 movie, midway. Rochford is portrayed as a kind of weirdo. A loud mouth who speaks with a twang, smokes cigars and walks around sloppily dressed in a red smock. His old staff hated the portrayal of him. They said he wasnt like that at all. They remembered him as a tall, slender, aristocratic gentleman who spoke softly and smoked a pipe at his desk. It is odd they should have thought that because joe was actually a consultant on the movie. He was on the set almost every day and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself. One little trouble was that the movie was released june 18, 1942 and im sorry. 1976, july 18, 1976 the movie was released and joe died july 20, a month later. So whether joe liked the movie or would have liked it, well probably never know. But rochford did wear a red smoking jacket down there because, as he said, it was cold out there. At first he and his odd characters pleased their bosses in washington. That changed after japans surprise attack on december 7. The code breakers werent blamed for that debacle, but Lawrence Safford lost some stach chur and credibility and he was reassigned and new bosses took over. This was bad news for rochford. His new bosses in washington didnt like his practice whereby he customarily reported his radio findings and so forth and whatnot to the fleet commander first. That is to say, hed report first to admiral kimmel while he was there and then secondarily to washington. Well, commander john ritman, another picture of those two gentlemen. John ritman now ran it. He was a curious choice. He did have friends in high places, which may explain it, but he had no background in cryptology. He was proficient in hardware, morse code, kind of regular stuff like that. But he had no background in cryptology or the part of the navys communication process. While ritman wanted code breaking and intelligence and findings to be centralized in washington. They wanted rochford to send in their data and let washington do the thinking. Rochford would go along with this. He thought because of the his background in kriptology and the japanese language he was better suited than the people in washington to render judgment on what the japanese intended. So he continued to report first to fleet headquarters. Over the weeks, the relations between the station and washington frayed. The two teamed spatted and sparred. But despite this bickering, they all did serious work. Along with code breakers in m melburne and some in washington were doing decent work, they found it a daunting task, how to break the japanese navys operational code. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the famous the numbers on the left are five digit code groups and the wording on the left on the right are plane text recoveries of those code groups. The top code group is a dive bomber and others have not been recovered. Some are ships. Some are something else. In all jn 25b has 55,000 code groups and assigning values to these code groups was a huge task. It was made harder by the fact that the code groups on the left were described by edtives. There was a book that looked like that, super imposed upon the regular code groups. So before you could read the real code group, you had to strip off these additives. Not easy work. Unlike enigma, the code used by the german army and navy, jm25b was not a machine encrypted code as code breakers were able to do with enigma. This was a manual code. Each group had to be solved with paper and pencil one at a time. Still, the analysts did use some machines. Koelators, tap lbulators and ot devices. Each month it used three million ibm punch cards for storage and retrieval of each portion of each five digit code group they received. Gradually a small but usable portion of jn25b became readable and when they were able to read it, they saw a huge offensive building up in japanese home waters. They knew the attack would be huge. They knew it would be bigger than the coral sea, but they didnt know where it would be. Now the station turned into a pressure cooker. To pinpoint the navys target, they worked long hours. He worked routinely 20hour days. His men worked almost as many hours. Their problem wasnt breaking messages so much as it was staying awake. One analyst, actually my favorite guy, Lieutenant Commander thomas h. Dire suffered various ailments. The result was sitting long hours at a desk struggling with code. To cope with this problem, he took uppers and downers. As he put it, i couldnt keep awake sitting at my desk, so my doctor gave me something to take in the morning and the phenobarbital at night and that worked pretty well. All this work did pay off. They intercepted that Imperial Navy message i told you about earlier that established midway as the target. The message contained the designator a. F. Rochford remembered back in march, they picked up a message from a japanese plane flying near midway and that plane sent a message to the island using the designator a. F. So a. F. Was clearly midway. Nobody had any doubt about that at pearl harbor. But when nimtz on may 14 reported the finding to washington, he ran into that buzz saw i described earlier. They all believed he intended to hit, not midway, but the American West coast in retaliation for the raid on april 18th had bombed tokyo and four other japanese cities, humiliating the imperil navy. The admiral about whom we heard from earlier, we know he was a guy who was temperamental, had a lot of anger and rage. Well, he first had doubts about midway and so did nimtz, but two days later king did something that astonished nimtz and his staff. King actually changed his mind and he accepted nimtzs assessment. Nimtz had to con joel from king the transfer from the coral sea to midway, but king went along with it. But this little group of analysts working separately didnt agree with hypo and they told king that he was making a terrible mistake and that if king followed his lead, he would be making a terrible mistake. The analysts actually believed that the imperil navy might be heading for samoa, rather than going east to midway or they thought hawaii itself would be the main target. So nimtz now was getting a little anxious himself and he told rochford that he needed better proof and rochford convened his team in the basement and there was a member of his staff well, this was king. We missed him. Jasper holmes informed rochford about midways vulnerability to water shortages, and they thought that if they could get midway to report a shortage, japanese radio men would pick that up, convey it to tokyo and the cat would be out of the bag. It was indeed going to be midway. Japanese radio men did take that bait and the word got out that it was now confirmed. The only trouble was rochford hadnt bothered to tell his bosses in washington about the water ploy and they didnt appreciate the slight, but they had no choice but to accept the final midway estimate. By the end of may, code breakers had decrypted so many messages they were able to put in order the battle. This is an iconic message, in my opinion. This is nimtzs dispatch to all commanders, all his commanders at sea on may 31st, ten days after this original water ploy, showing how much he had learned from his code breakers about what was going to happen at midway. From this message, we can see that nimtz had incredibly detailed information. He knew about a Striking Force coming in from the northwest and there were carriers. He knew about a support force and an occupation force coming in from the west with transports and destroyers and as many as 16 submarines. So nimtz was really armed. With this information, nimtz proceeded with his plan to surprise the japanese, as we all knew he did. In the aftermath of that stunning victory, rochford should have been the man of the hour. He was awarded a distinguished Service Medal. They persuaded king to veto that medal and he went with the recommendation of his staff and vetoed it. Later they removed rochford from pearl harbor to San Francisc