Communications Intelligence: Press Disclosures In 1942 - Chicago Tribune

The Snowden affair calls to mind an earlier history of U.S. Intelligence efforts targeting communications. In the 1920's and 30's, the United States targeted foreign diplomatic and military communications. The early origins of the effort remain murky. The entire field of cryptography and cryptanalysis burgeoned after the introduction of radio communications. Intercepted radio message traffic provided intelligence analysts vast quantities of material to exploit. During World War I, the main target was Germany.

After WWI, for a time the effort continued using combined resources of the Army, Navy, State Department and Justice, under leadership of Herbert Yardley, who had headed the Army's communications intelligence effort during the Great War. This effort, known officially as the Cipher Bureau and unofficially as the American Black Chamber, continued until it was closed during the Hoover Administration in an apparent economy measure. Or, alternatively, it was closed as a result of Secretary of State Stimson's discomfort with the program. "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail," he declared.

Japan had been a major target of US communications intelligence which played a key role in US diplomatic success during the Washington Naval Conference of 1922. The Navy began its own effort at communications intelligence in 1926 (probably building on earlier efforts). Here is an account of the Navy's efforts leading up to WWII.

Something to bear in mind is that US Government efforts to intercept, decode, translate and distribute foreign message traffic was in clear violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1934. These efforts, which played a key role in US operational success in both oceans during WWII, continued to violate US law until an exception was made by statute in 1978.

In the intervening decades, there were several instances of inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of US communications intelligence. Here is an account of what happened in 1942 concerning one such unauthorized disclosure concerning Midway:

The Battle of Midway continued long after the combatants retired. Because of the confusion that surrounded the nascent and relatively unfamiliar U.S. Navy policies governing secrecy and need to know in 1942, the Battle of Midway was refought in the newspapers and courthouses of three major U.S. cities - New York, Chicago, and Washington - for several weeks after the battle actually ended. At issue was how the Navy knew of Japanese plans, how that knowledge came into the possession of a newspaper reporter, and how the government should handle a serious security violation. In the end no one was ever formally punished for revealing to the public the role communications intelligence played in the Japanese defeat. Whether the Japanese ever discovered that U.S. cryptologists had successfully penetrated their most secret operational code, or even suspected the magnitude of the warning provided by COMINT, remains a matter of conjecture to this day. At the time, however, officials within OP-20-G were certain that subsequent almost draconian corrections in Japanese communications procedures and cryptography were traceable directly to the following events.

On 17 May 1942, the survivors of the Lexington were en route to San Diego and San Francisco aboard the USS Barnett and the USS Elliot. (One account said that Admiral Fitch and Captain Sherman were aboard the transport Chester.) Anticipating their arrival in the United States, CINCPAC sent the following message to Admiral Fletcher, CTF 17, with information copies to COMINCH and the Commandants of the 11th and 12th Naval Districts:

It is imperative that all survivors Coral Sea action being returned Mainland be instructed that they are to refrain from any mention of the action upon their arrival west coast port. Com11 is requested berth transports where debarkation can be conducted without contact with newsmen. All personnel will probably require reoutfitting. There will be no publicity regarding this matter until Navy Department release. Barnett and Elliot will stop at San Diego to discharge excess personnel en route San Francisco. 

Despite these precautions by CINCPAC, events aboard the Barnett resulted in even more damaging revelations than those CINCPAC had hoped to prevent. In ancillary actions, CINCPAC learned that medical reports filed in Navy Bureau of Medicine channels revealed the status of American carriers after the battle. In a hasty message on 3 June 1942, CINCPAC notified COMINCH and requested immediate action to suppress the errant reports. At 2050 on 8 June 1942, COMINCH sent the following message to CINCPAC:

Contents of your 311221 May were published almost verbatim in several newspapers yesterday. Article originated with correspondent Stanley Johnson [sic] embarked on [USS] Barnett until June 2d. While your despatch was addressed Task Force Commanders it was sent in channel available to nearly all ships which emphasizes need of care in using channels para. Cominch investigating on Barnett and at San Diego. 

CINCPAC's message of 311221 May contained his final appreciation of the Japanese order of battle prior to Midway.

True to his word, COMINCH immediately convened several formal inquiry panels, which began gathering depositions from witnesses. The panels inquired into the circumstances aboard the Barnett, which, in addition to most of the crew, carried the executive officer of the Lexington, Commander Morton T. Seligman, and a newspaper correspondent, Mr. Stanley Johnston, back to the United States, and in Chicago in the headquarters Colonel R.R. McCormick's newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, where the story had originated. According to Admiral King's biographer, Thomas B. Buell in Master of Seapower, Admiral King "was in a white fury at his headquarters while his staff frantically tried to discover the source of the leak."

By 11 June all of the principals had been interviewed. Those aboard the Barnett were interviewed more than once. Out of this work emerged a very unpleasant picture of official neglect and confusion concerning the safeguarding of communications intelligence both on the Barnett and in the newspapers. Because of the perception that newsmen accompanying U.S. forces were sworn to secrecy, indictments of the principal employees of the Chicago Tribune were sought on 9 June, even before the inquiries were completed. They were returned on 7 July by a Chicago grand jury. At this point serious snags appeared at every turn, and the matter lay in the hands of the grand jury and a special prosecutor for several weeks while the navy added depositions to a record that increasingly showed that Johnston, a British subject, had, with the help or negligence of others, betrayed the trust placed in him.

While many in the navy focused on finding a suitable punishment for Johnston, COMINCH issued another memorandum on 20 June 1942 similar to those he had originated in March and April. It was sent to CINCLANT, CINCPAC, and CDR- SWPACFORCE bearing the subject "Control of Dissemination and Use of Radio Intelligence." Within the navy this would prove to be the only remedial action to come out of the Johnston case.

On 24 June the New York newspaper PM published a story without attribution announcing that the Justice Department did not plan to prosecute anyone, either in the newspapers or in the U.S. Navy, as a result of their role in the revelations. Ironically, three days later the navy discovered that Johnston's own government had earlier declared him "unreliable" as a correspondent. It was the same government, however, that subsequently forged the ultimate solution by addressing the correlation between the Johnston revelations and safeguarding communications intelligence.

On 14 July, the special prosecutor, Mr. William D. Mitchell, transmitted his comprehensive "Report on the Chicago Tribune Case" to Attorney General Francis Biddle and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. His conclusion, after he had reviewed the law, the evidence, and the circumstances surrounding the "leak," ended by suggesting that "the game may not be worth the candle" and that the national effort would be better served if the case were dropped.

In the mind of the special prosecutor, none of his major reasons for dropping the case concerned the safeguarding of communications intelligence. Three salient points concerning the merits of the government's case were cited instead. All were related to the personal behavior of the principals: "1) Johnston said (on 8 June) that he got the information from a paper he found on his desk; 2) Two officers testified seeing Seligman working at a table in his quarters and that before him was a 'writing on Navy paper' giving a list of Jap vessels divided into a 'striking force, support force, etc.'; 3) If, as appears likely, some officer left a copy of that dispatch lying around, it may fairly be said there was as much carelessness on the ship as the Tribune was guilty of, and the Jury may think so." 

No further action was taken until 15 August 1942, when the British Admiralty delegation in Washington sent a letter to Admiral King expressing concern that the Hearst revelations posed a danger to special intelligence methods, that a trial would further compromise this source, and that "preservation of this invaluable weapon outweighs almost any other consideration." King's reply reassured the British that the U.S. Navy would not do anything to increase the harm already inflicted by the original news story.  Five days later, the Chicago Daily Tribune carried the front page story, "U.S. Jury Clears Tribune." This story signaled the end of the grand jury investigation, though no reasons were ever given to the press by Mr. Mitchell, the special prosecutor.

What were the facts in the strange case of Stanley Johnston? As noted above, CINCPAC 311221Z May 42, was the message that passed CINCPAC's final appreciation of the Japanese order of battle for the Battle of Midway to the commanders of Task Forces 16 and 17, Admirals Spruance and Fletcher, respectively. The message was passed in communications channels available to other ships. Contrary to normal practices, which expected communicators to ignore traffic not addressed to their ship or commander, it was probably decoded by communications officers from the Lexington en route home from the loss of their ship at Coral Sea, who were acting as watch standers aboard the transport USS Barnett (AP11). Their reason for doing so may have been the presence of the Lexington's executive officer, Commander Morton Seligman. The message was given to Commander Seligman, who, apparently under the impression that he was authorized to do so, showed the message to Johnston, who had been aboard the Lexington during the battle and was being evacuated with the crew. Johnston and Seligman may have shared the same quarters aboard the Barnett. 

On 7 June 1942, five days after Johnston's arrival in San Diego and one day after CINCPAC's "POA Communique #3" appeared announcing "a momentous U.S. victory," Johnston's story of U.S. foreknowledge of Japanese forces and their plans appeared in the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers in Washington and New York. The headlines that introduced the story on page 4A in the Washington Times Herald for 7 June 1942 revealed without a doubt that the author had been privy to secret material concerning Japanese intentions and strategy: "U.S. KNEW ALL ABOUT JAP FLEET. GUESSED THERE WOULD BE A FEINT AT ONE BASE, REAL ATTACK AT ANOTHER."

Though he could not know the extent of the duplicity involved, Walter Winchell, in his column in the New York Daily Mirror, characterized the Tribune as having "tossed security out the window." Understandably, Johnston's repeated denials that he had ever seen CINCPAC's message were received with cynical disbelief in Washington. Even his media superiors readily admitted they could not otherwise account for the similarities. 

On 8 June, following an inconclusive meeting between high naval and newspaper officials, Johnston and his editor in Washington, Arthur Henning, met privately with Vice Admiral Russell Willson, Admiral King's chief of staff. It was during this meeting, as noted by the special prosecutor, that Johnston may have contradicted himself (Admiral Willson was to say that Johnston "confessed") and admitted seeing a list of Japanese vessels.  With the concurrence of the secretary of the navy and the president, Admiral King barred Seligman from promotion forever. Seligman retired in 1944.

OP-20-G's assessment of the damage done by the Johnston revelations took a long time to develop primarily because the Japanese themselves were slow to change their procedures. Nevertheless, OP-20-G maintained it was no mere coincidence that within a few weeks of the Johnston expose drastic changes were made in virtually all Japanese codes and ciphers including the Japanese Fleet General-Purpose System, which changed on 15 August, only two months into the current cipher. Consistent with these changes, navy monitors also noted the omission of message serial numbers beginning on 15 August and a major change in the Japanese callsign system on 1 October 1942. 

All of the Japanese refinements were justifiably described by OP-20-G analysts as serious threats to their capability to produce current intelligence.  Thus, it is difficult to say at this point that a single event occurred that prompted Admiral King to decide what course of action he would take. It may have been OP-20-G's concern that a jury trial would have even more painful consequences than those already experienced, or Admiral Willson's reading of the meeting he had had with Johnston, or the trauma of preparing highly classified testimony to be given before a Chicago grand jury. Clearly, Admiral King had decided not to implement the 7 July grand jury indictment when he responded to the British letter in August; and the evidence suggests, albeit weakly, that as early as 20 June he had begun to regret even seeking the indictment.

Throughout the Johnston affair, OP-20-G consistently sought a plausible cover story to minimize the damage already done. They appealed to King for future safeguards to prevent the loss of a vital advantage to the navy. King's reiteration of his restrictions on distribution on 20 June, while perhaps not all that OP-20-G wanted, strongly suggested that these appeals were heard.

Questions concerning the appropriate applications of communications intelligence to wartime emergencies of all types continued to arise. One problem addressed in December 1942 affected how newspapermen and radio broadcasters treated information they knew originated from enemy communications. A new paragraph was prepared for insertion in the "Code of Wartime Practices for the American Press" by the secretaries of war and navy and sent to the director of censorship for implementation:

ENEMY COMMUNICATIONS

To the end that the enemy may not have information concerning any success the U.S. may attain in deciphering his encoded or enciphered communications, no mention should be made of available or captured enemy codes or enemy ciphers, or about the intelligence gained from intercepting and studying enemy radio messages.

A prestigious trade journal gave immediate approval to the addition while at the same time registering the idea that after the war censorship should not continue. After citing a post-Pearl Harbor report that "monstrously exaggerated" U.S. losses as an example of irresponsible behavior, the editorial concluded with some ideas that are still relevant:

As between an ethical professional requirement that a journalist hold nothing back and a patriotic duty not to shoot one's own soldiers in the back, we have found no difficulty in making a choice. Freedom of the press does not carry with it a general license to reveal our secret strengths and weaknesses to the enemy. 

It was not until 1985 that anyone from the Pacific COMINT centers received any formal recognition for his contribution to either the Coral Sea or Midway victories. In 1985, in response to a massive outpouring of affection from his friends, Joseph Rochefort received the Distinguished Service Medal posthumously from the secretary of the navy. For the rest, their epitaph was most fittingly expressed by a perfect stranger many years later:

History, with its flickering lamp, stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to man is his conscience. The only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations, but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour. 

D-Day

Just a reminder that sixty-nine years ago today, Allied troops stormed ashore on the landing beaches of Normandy, establishing a beachhead in France. Less than a year later, Germany surrendered. The United States was at war with Germany about three and a half years from declaration of war to surrender.

Bob Fletcher, American Hero

We've probably all seen Spencer Tracy in "Bad Day at Black Rock." If not, we should have.

The internment of Americans of Japanese descent is one of the more disgraceful events of World War II. Many loyal Americans lost their property during their internment.

But Bob Fletcher, an American who knew injustice when he saw it, saved the farms of three hard working Japanese families. His obituary in the Sacramento Bee tells the story. He kept the families from suffering the fate of the Japanese in the Spencer Tracy movie.

Bob Fletcher was just one man. He couldn't right all the injustice of all the interned families. But he did what he could where he was with the tools at hand.

No more can be asked of anyone.

Do We Glorify War?

President George W. Bush often claimed that America "does not glorify war."

Television stations and cable networks across the land spent last weekend proving the opposite.

Memorial Day had its start as "Decoration Day." A day to decorate the graves of those who fell in the American Civil War. The only decorating that goes on these days is when elected officials ceremonially place wreaths on symbolic graves. Our population, for the most part, has no knowledge and understanding of the everyday sacrifices of military families. Even less are they connected with the anguish of the families of deceased soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Decoration Day was a day in which survivors could share their anguish, even as they decorated the graves. This was not a march of triumph.

Armistice Day (as I choose to continue calling November 11th) was a celebration. Not a celebration of victory, but of the end of a conflict that ended the world as Europeans and Americans had known it in 1914.

Each time, we promise never to forget. We have finally learned our lesson.

But our learning process never keeps pace with our forgetting tendencies.

Especially when the sacrifices have been made by someone else.

Memorial Day 2013

We attended the Memorial Day ceremony at Bayboro this morning.

It is always a rewarding experience to talk to older veterans. But I have noticed some developments in recent years worth pondering.

The first thing that stands out is the age of attendees. They tend to be older and older each year. As if the whole enterprise of recognizing and remembering veterans has less and less connection to our youth.

In a way, that's not surprising. There was a time when we were all in this together. Seventy years ago, war and rumors of war affected the entire population.

Now fewer and fewer people are involved in the sacrifices and inconveniences of war.

On the one hand, that's a good thing. Fewer casualties.

On the other hand, military service has long since ceased to be a shared experience - a common effort for the good of the nation. There would be benefits in recapturing the idea of common effort for the common good.

Seventy Years Ago: May 24, 1942: Admiral Doenitz Removes Submarine Force And Concedes Battle Of The Atlantic

By 1943, expansion of Allied antisubmarine force, improvement of Air operations against submarines, including aircraft operating from small escort carriers, were making life difficult for German submarines. Admiral Doenitz, the German submarine commander, explained his withdrawal of the force by improvements in Allied ASW weapons and organization. Here is his report.

Doenitz' list is incomplete. How did the Allied ASW forces know where to look for German submarines? It's a big ocean out there.

The Allies knew where to look because of their great successes in communications intelligence. They intercepted and decrypted German orders to submarines, even orders encrypted by Germany's latest Enigma machines. When Germany began changing their communications keys several times a day, cryptanalysts kept up.

They tracked submarines using the extensive Allied High Frequency Direction Finding network ("Huff-Duff"), even when the submarines began compressing the messages and sending them in "burst" transmissions.

The war was fought and won not only on the high seas and in the air, but more significantly in the back rooms of headquarters, using the black arts of cryptanalysis.

Seventy Years Ago: May 23, 1943, Secret Weapons Test

May 23, 1943, the US Army tested a new secret weapon: incendiary bats.

Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry exposed the whole story in a column printed in 1990. I would simply copy and post the relevant portion about the bat project as blogger Brad DeLong did, but I read the Miami Herald's warning about copyright. What might be called the bloodthirsty copyright notice. So I followed their instructions and put a link to the entire column here.

I recommend you pay no attention to the part of the column about air dropped trout and go right to the interesting part about incendiary bats. Hey, there was a war on.

Seventy Years Ago: May 19, 1943 - Battle of The Atlantic Turning Point

By May 19, 1942, the Allies had begun to turn the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic. German submarines were achieving less and less in their effort to interrupt the flow of goods from America to England. Not only had Allied equipment and procedures improved to the point that escort ships were able to defend against submarines more effectively, aircraft were able to detect and attack submarines at greater distance from land.

Here is an account of one successful effort against submarine wolf packs.

A key element in increased Allied success was the effective use of communications intelligence, including code breaking and high frequency direction finding. By this time, all of the technical means of detecting and tracking submarines had improved to the point that German submarine operations had become very hazardous.

A significant organizational change occurred on May 20, with formation of the U.S. 10th Fleet, essentially a paper organization headquartered in Washington, DC.

Tenth Fleet's mission was to destroy enemy submarines, protect coastal merchant shipping, centralize control and routing of convoys, and to coordinate and supervise all USN anti-submarine warfare (ASW) training, anti-submarine intelligence, and coordination with Allied nations. The fleet was active from May 1943 to June 1945.

Tenth Fleet had no ships of its own, but used Commander-in-Chief Atlantic's ships operationally; CinCLANT issued orders to escort groups originating in the United States and organized and operated hunter-killer groups built around the growing fleet of small Escort Aircraft Carriers.  Tenth Fleet never put to sea, had no ships, and never had more than about 50 people in its organization. The fleet was disbanded after the surrender of Germany.

Seventy Years Ago: Isoroku Yamamoto

April 18, 1943, a squadron of US Army P-38 twin engine fighters took off from Guadalcanal on a 1,000 mile round-trip flight to shoot down a Japanese aircraft taking a very important person to Bougainville. The very important person was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Fleet.

Four days earlier, US Navy communications intelligence personnel intercepted a series of messages encoded in the Japanese naval operating code, JN-25. It proved to be a series of communications giving Admiral Yamamoto's precise itinerary for a command inspection tour. The purpose of the tour was to enhance Japanese morale for their next planned offensive operations.

US planners considered what aircraft to assign to the mission. The only aircraft with enough range was the P-38. Eighteen P-38's were assigned to the mission, code-named Vengeance. The planned time of intercept was 09:35.

The four P-38's designated to intercept Yamamoto arrived at 09:34 just as Yamamoto's flight of two Japanese twin-engined aircraft began their descent. The interceptors shot down both aircraft. Yamamoto, in the lead aircraft, perished. Yamamoto's deputy, in the second aircraft, survived.

The mission was an assassination. The assassination succeeded.  Today we would call it a "targeted killing."

Did it shorten the war or make the next two years of warfare easier? Probably not.

Who Are The Tyrants?

Churchill saw Tyranny as the foe.

So who were the tyrants?

Economic historian Brad DeLong has a very interesting blog post today on the history of Tyrants, especially twentieth century tyrants.

His essay is worth reading. Just as worthy of attention are the many well-argued comments others have posted taking exception to or modifying many of the points DeLong makes.

Seventy Years Ago: Wartime Rationing

I have written before about rationing. It pervaded our lives during World War II and it involved an enormous organization to plan and control the economy to insure a successful war effort. The "magic of the marketplace" wasn't up to the task.

Economist Brad DeLong provides a link to a detailed explanation of how it worked. World War II truly mobilized all of our national assets.

Was this trip necessary? Yes it was.

On a personal note, I was ten years old before I learned to ride a bicycle. They weren't available during the war. When bicycles came back on the market in 1947, my grandfather bought one and drove 125 miles from Tulsa to Oklahoma City to deliver it on my tenth birthday.

Seventy Years Ago: Battle Of Komandorski Islands

Did you ever hear about the Battle of Komandorski Islands? In brief, March 26 1943, RADM "Sock" McMorris took his task group out west of the Aleutian Islands to intercept a Japanese force enroute to reinforce the Japanese garrison on the island of Attu. It turned out the Japanese force was about twice as strong as McMorris' force.

The Americans got their noses bloodied, but they held off the Japanese force, who returned home without reinforcing Attu.

Here's a more complete account.

Just imagine fighting a battle that close to the Arctic.

1968: Perfidy In DC

Lyndon Johnson had the goods on Richard Nixon. But he couldn't use it.

The Democratic Party convention in Chicago was a disaster. Johnson even considered appearing at the last minute and putting his name forward for nomination.

Bad idea.

Peace talks were going on in Paris, and North Vietnam had made a promising offer.

Richard Nixon feared that prospects for peace would scuttle his campaign. He sent Anna Chennault as his intermediary with the South Vietnamese ambassador, pleading with them to put off negotiations and wait for a better deal after the election.

The FBI bugged Chennault and the National Security Agency monitored the Ambassador's communications with Saigon.

Johnson knew what was going on. In private he called it treason. But he couldn't make it public without revealing the monitoring. It's generally considered bad form to bug embassies and read ambassadorial communications - and to reveal it in public.

Of course, it's even worse form not to monitor and to get caught flat footed.

So Johnson kept his mouth shut in public.

Nixon won by less than 1%. Had Nixon's perfidy become public, he may well have lost by a landslide.

Here is the story. All captured on Lyndon Johnson's White House tapes.

It wouldn't be the last time a presidential candidate meddled in international negotiations to the detriment of national interests. It may well have been the last time such actions were so clearly documented.

Ten Years Ago: Freedom Fries

I failed to note an anniversary last week. On March 11, 2003, Congressman Walter B. Jones and Congressman Bob Ney announced that henceforth menu items in the Congressional cafeteria would be renamed: "French Fries" would henceforth be listed as "Freedom Fries," and "French Toast" would be renamed "Freedom Toast."

This episode of international silliness started because France refused to join the United States in the invasion of Iraq.

Quickly forgotten by most Americans was that on September 12, 2001, NATO (including France) invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, declaring that if it was shown that the September 11 attack was coordinated from abroad, the Alliance viewed the attack on the United States as an attack on all members.

Early on in the effort to retaliate against Afghanistan, European members of NATO offered to contribute more military forces than the United States was willing to accept.

The Bush Administration sought special assistance from French Intelligence sources. France had by far the most complete intelligence in the Western world on Islamic extremism. They willingly shared this information with the United States. In fact, it is fair to say that French intelligence was essential to the early progress of the investigation.

When the United States turned its attention from Afghanistan to Iraq, France was not the only NATO member unwilling to support the invasion of Iraq. Turkey also refused to allow US forces to invade Iraq across the Turkish-Iraqi border.

Both Turkey and France were quite certain that Iraq had nothing to do the 9/11 attack on the US, and were equally certain that Saddam Hussein had not collaborated with Al-Qaida.

When asked much later about the "Freedom Fries" episode, Congressman Jones admitted he "wished it had never happened."

Seventy Years Ago: New Guinea And Bismarck Sea

They called it "The Battle Of Bismarck Sea," but it wasn't much of a battle.




Following the loss of Guadalcanal, Japan shifted their focus to New Guinea. The plan was to reinforce their airbases at Salamaua and Lae.

A Japanese convoy of eight destroyers and eight troop transports with an escort of approximately 100 aircraft – assembled and departed from Simpson Harbour in Rabaul 28 February. They planned a route along the north coast, to avoid Allied air cover. Allied air attacks on the convoy at this point would have to fly over New Britain, allowing easy interception from Japanese air bases. But the final leg ran the gauntlet of the Vitiaz Strait.

Allied cryptanalysts decrypted Japanese communications revealing the plan. More than 6,000 Japanese troops were on their way to reinforce Lae. General MacArthur, concerned that the reinforcements would make it impossible for the Allies to advance in New Guinea, ordered General Kenney, Commander of the Fifth Air Force, to attack the convoys.

Beginning March 2, 1943, Allied Air Forces began attacking the Japanese convoy with a mix of light, heavy and medium bombers specially converted and trained to attack shipping, accompanied by 54 fighters.

By end of the day March 4, the Allies had sunk 8 transports and five destroyers, destroyed twenty Japanese aircraft and prevented all but 1200 Japanese soldiers from reaching Lae.

Many of the attacking aircraft flew over the Owen Stanley range from Port Moresby. My father, serving at Port Moresby in the 27th Air Depot group, was subjected to nightly air raids by Japanese aircraft flying from Lae and Salamaua. During the day he put US aircraft back together for new missions.

Drones, War and Moral Hazard

There has been a lot of discussion by talking heads and writing (by writing heads?) recently about drones. And not just against terrorists. It almost sound like our domestic airspace will soon be full of drones.

Let's give some thought to what we are about. I'm not sure that dressing game console operators up in flight suits, paying them "incentive pay" (we used to call it flight pay), calling them "pilots" and giving them hero medals is what we should be doing.

What I think I'm hearing is a lot of relatively naive talk about "killing the bad guys" though it might be couched in more sophisticated verbiage.

In the popular imagination, war is about killing as many of our opponents as possible. In the professional imagination, Karl von Klausewitz was closer to the mark when he explained that "war is politics by other, namely violent means." What he means, is that there must be a point to what we do beyond killing "the bad guys."

War is not completely separate from diplomacy, either. I think presidential scholar Richard Neustadt got it about right a half century ago when he described the task of diplomacy as to convince enough people and the right people on the other side that what you want is what they also want, in order to further their own interest.

Some sources of human conflict are best moderated with deterrence, some with "compellance," and some with negotiation. Wisdom lies in knowing when. And to what end.

Violence, in the long run, is not a way of resolving human conflict. In international affairs, it is at best like the two by four the farmer hits the mule with. "That's to get it's attention," the farmer explains.

Once you get the opponent's attention, maybe it's best to sit down and reason together.

Back to the subject of drones. And moral hazard.

Let me repeat some earlier thoughts.

Economists talk about "moral hazard." This refers to a situation where there is a tendency to take undue risks because the costs are not borne by the party taking the risk. Like financial wizards who take in enormous bonuses just before the crash and leaves it to the rest of the country to pick up the pieces. We should extend the concept to war.

In 1941 and 1942 the attacking forces faced at least as much risk as those being attacked. This was true at Pearl Harbor, at Bataan and Corregidor, in the Coral Sea,  at Midway, and countless other battles.

It is usually not true of the political leaders who order a country to war. They do not bear the risks that face the military forces.

The equation of risk becomes distorted forever when attacks are conducted from halfway around the world by skilled gamers who sit in front of computers and direct robotic drones to destroy targets and people. It is the inhabitants of target areas who bear the risk.

Is this a kind of moral risk we are willing to take?

As a professional military officer, I always wanted to minimize the risk to my own sailors. At what point does this kind of planning cross a moral divide?

Apart from moral considerations, we may need to think about the message we convey. Is the message that our cause is not worth risking an American life? If so, we should say so. But we need to ask ourselves the question - if a cause is not worth dying for, is it worth killing for?

Seventy Years Ago: USS Iowa (BB-61)

 

New York, NY: February 22, 1943. USS Iowa (BB-61) was commissioned at New York Naval Shipyard. The lead ship of the most powerful US battleships ever built, Iowa was a 45,000 -ton ship armed with nine 16-inch/50 caliber guns with a range of up to 24 miles, firing a projectile weighing up to 2,750 pounds. She also carried twenty 40-mm quadruple barrel Bofors anti-aircraft guns and twenty 5-inch/38 caliber dual-purpose guns arranged in twin mounts with a range of about 9 miles against surface targets. In addition, she bristled with 20-mm antiaircraft guns that proved of limited use and were removed right after the war.

Class & type:	Iowa-class battleship
Displacement:	45,000 tons
Length:	887 ft 3 in (270.43 m)
Beam:	108 ft 2 in (32.97 m)
Draft:	37 ft 2 in (11.33 m)
Speed:	33 kn (38 mph; 61 km/h)
Complement:	151 officers, 2637 enlisted
Armament:	1943: 9 × 16 in (406 mm)/50 cal Mark 7 guns 20 × 5 in (127.0 mm)/38 cal Mark 12 guns 80 × 40 mm/56 cal anti-aircraft guns 49 × 20 mm/70 cal anti-aircraft cannons

USS Iowa is the first ship I ever went to sea in  during a midshipman training cruise to Europe during the summer of 1955.

Seventy Years Ago: The Week That Was

February 8, 1943, Japanese destroyer force (Rear Admiral Hashimoto Shintaro) completes the evacuation of 1,796 troops from Guadalcanal. The next day, February 9, 1943, US Army General Patch announced the end of organized Japanese resistance on the Island.

January 31, 1943, the German headquarters of the 6th Army at Stalingrad surrendered, including Field Marshall Paulus. Remaining scattered units surrendered February 2, ending the siege of Stalingrad.

To the north, on January 18, 1943, The Soviet Union established a land corridor iinto Leningrad, providing some relief for the siege of Leningrad, though it would be another year before the siege was completely broken.

Things were not going so well for the Allies in North Africa, but Germany was no longer able to reliably supply Rommel's forces. Rommel's forces would last for another three months.

There were to be no further Axis advances on any front.

Seventy Years Ago: Battle Of Rennell Island, Phase II

Dawn on January 30, 1942, found Admiral Giffen's Task Force 18 on its way back to Espiritu Santo. Their mission had not been completed. They did not rendezvous with the destroyer division from Tulagi, as had been planned. The resupply ships unloaded their supplies on Guadalcanal without the protection of TF 18.

Apparently Giffen lifted radio silence, because the previous night's disaster was reported to Adm Halsey in Noumea. At Halsey's direction, the two escort carriers kept a combat air patrol (CAP) on station over Chicago and Louisville all night long. He also ordered Rear Admiral Frederick Sherman's Enterprise carrier group to dd more CAP aircraft from dawn to dusk.

Halsey dispatched the tug Navajo and the destroyer transport Sands to go to Chicago's assistance. That afternoon, Halsey directed Giffen to return to Efate with the remaining battle worthy ships, turn the towing duties over to Navajo and rely on CAP to defend Chicago. Giffen took with him on Wichita the force's only trained fighter direction officer (FDO). Chicago had no practical way to control the CAP sent to their defense.


Four Grumman F4F's from Enterprise spotted a Japanes scout bomber and chased it for 40 miles, leaving Chicago unprotected. Eleven Japanese Bettys appeared over the horizon.

USS Enterprise, now only 40 miles south of Chicago, directed a flight of six F4F's to intercept the bombers, which appeared headed for Enterprise. The Japanese bombers immediately reversed course and headed for Chicago, which they believed to be a battleship. They identified the destroyer La Vallette, still standing by the cruiser and tug as a "Honolulu-class" cruiser. About 4:20 pm, nine Japanese bombers appeared out of the clouds and made their final approach in the face of heavy anti-aircraft fire.

At 4:24 one torpedo hit the starboard side forward, followed almost immediately with three torpedoes right where the ship had been hit the previous day. The captain ordered "abandon ship." At 4:43 pm the ship rolled to starboard and sank with her colors flying.

Navajo, Waller, Edwards and Sands picked up 1,069 survivors. La Vallette took one torpedo hit and survived.

Admiral Nimitz was irate when he learned that Chicago had been lost. He blamed Admiral Giffen. Giffens career survived, however, and he retired after the war as a Vice Admiral.

Chicago lost six officers and 55 enlisted men when the ship went down.

Chicago was the last ship lost in the struggle for Guadalcanal. By February 9, Japan had evacuated their last soldiers from the island.

This may have been the final "turning point" of the war. After this, Japan was fighting a rear guard action. The United States was busy replacing their lost ships, planes and sailors. Japan was not able to.

The cost of victory was high. For 2500 square miles of jungle, tall grass and sluggish rivers, the Allies had lost two fleet carriers, eight cruisers, 14 destroyers, numerous smaller vessels and aircraft, and over 6,000 lives: nearly 1600 Marines and soldiers, the rest - three times as many - Navy officers and men.

The cost of defeat was higher. Japan lost two battleships, a small carrier, four cruisers, 11 destroyers, and more than 23,000 men.

But they also lost any hope of victory.

Seventy Years Ago: Battle Of Rennell Island

The first six months of the war in the Pacific were fought mostly with ships, planes and men already in the Pacific when Pearl Harbor was attacked. They had been worked up to a high state of combat readiness by their fleet commander, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Even after Kimmel was relieved of duty following the attack, the surviving forces acquitted themselves well.

The Pacific Fleet was hard pressed. They had lost four of their six large aircraft carriers in combat, and the remaining two, USS Saratoga and USS Enterprise,  were just returning from extensive repair.

Some Pacific Fleet assets had been diverted to the Atlantic for the invasion of North Africa. That invasion now over, ships were moving through the Panama Canal to reinforce the Pacific.



That was the good news. The bad news is that the ships, their officers and their admirals weren't accustomed to operating in the Pacific. Not only was the tactical challenge different from the Atlantic, there was a less tangible difference of attitude.

The Atlantic Fleet was a "spit and polish" outfit. The Pacific Fleet was more a "get the job done" operation. That was especially true of the aviators and submariners.

RADM Giffen's Formation

RADM Robert C. "Ike" Giffen, a favorite of Atlantic Fleet Commander Admiral King, had just arrived in the Southwest Pacific with heavy cruiser USS Wichita and escort carriers Chenango and Suwanee, all having just completed the invasion of North Africa.

Giffen had experience against German submarines, but none against Japanese naval air forces. He also had very limited experience operating aircraft carriers. The two escort carriers were slow. Converted oilers, they could make no more than 18 knots. Worse than that, the wind was from the southeast, opposite from the direction Giffen needed to go.

Giffen had no concept of Japanese naval skills at operating both warships and aircraft at night.

Giffen's task force of three heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, eight destroyers and two escort carriers left Efate January 29. Destination: Guadalcanal by way of Rennell Island. Mission: Support a four-ship resupply mission for the marines, then sweep up through the "slot" to find and destroy Japanese ships.

Giffen ordered radio silence. Japanese submarines and aircraft tracked the force from the time it left Efate.

Louisville Towing Chicago

Under the circumstances, strict radio silence made little sense. The ships used their air and surface search radars, which the Japanese could detect at about the same range as the UHF radios used for line of sight communications. Most importantly, this order prevented the cruisers from communicating with the aircraft launched by the carriers.

Early the afternoon of January 29, Giffen worried that he wouldn't be at his rendezvous point on time. He ordered the two carriers, along with two destroyers, to continue at best speed, while the remainder of his force increased speed to 24 knots, remaining in a formation designed to protect against submarines rather than aircraft attack. Steaming at that speed increased the force's self noise so greatly as to render the sonar used to detect submarines nearly useless. It also announced the presence of the task force out to almost as great a distance as UHF radios would have.

Shortly after increasing speed, radar operators on the cruisers began picking up radar blips of unidentified aircraft ("bogies"). The US radars were equipped with an IFF feature to electronically distinguish friend from foe, but operators deemed it unreliable. To find out whether the radar blips were friendly or hostile aircraft would have required fighter-director personnel to send aircraft from the carriers to visually identify the aircraft. But they couldn't do so because of radio silence.

Radio silence made no sense.

At sunset, Giffen ceased zigzagging his force and proceeded on a set course to his rendezvous. The bogies were about sixty miles to the west, approaching fast. They were in fact hostile, Japanese twin-engine land-based bombers, armed with torpedoes. The Bettys maneuvered around Giffen's force and attacked from the east, where they sky was dark, but with Giffen's ships silhouetted against the evening twilight.

Giffen's ships put up a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, and the first wave of bombers did not damage any of the ships. USS Louisville was struck by a dud torpedo, but there was no damage. Giffen issued no orders, and the force continued as before.

A second Japanese air group dropped flares alongside Giffen's cruisers in the moonless night. At 7:38 pm, the lead Betty crashed in flames off USS Chicago's port bow, brightly silhouetting the ship for the following aircraft.

One air launched torpedo hit Chicago in the starboard side, flooding the after fire room. Two minutes later, another torpedo hit at number three fireroom. Three of the ship's four shafts stopped turning, the rudder jammed, and soon the ship was dead in the water. Another torpedo hit the flagship Wichita but did not explode.

Chicago's crew managed to control flooding with the list at 11 degrees. At first, they had only electrical power from the emergency diesel generator. Soon they were able to relight one boiler and generate more electricity to use more powerful pumps.

Giffen ordered USS Louisville to take Chicago in tow. By midnight, The tow was underway at three knots, headed for Espiritu Santo.