70 Years Ago: May 27, 1942 - Japanese Carriers Underway

Admiral Nagumo’s carrier force (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu) got underway to provide carrier air support for the planned invasion of Midway. Escorting the force were two battleships, three cruisers and many destroyers. Including the invasion force, the Japanese fleet numbered about ninety vessels. Japanese planners were certain that the US only had two carriers available, and expected them to be in Pearl Harbor, unable to reach Midway in time.

The Japanese Navy was unaware that US Navy cryptographers had broken the fleet's operational code, known to US analysts as JN-25.

Military Experience And Politics

The Washington Post printed an interesting opinion piece a couple of days ago by retired army colonel John Nagl, "Does Military Service Still Matter For The Presidency?"

"In every presidential election since 1992," Nagle observes, "the candidate with the less distinguished military résumé has triumphed" (I would add 1972 and 1980 as well). Nagl sees this as a dramatic change, pointing out that "The crucible of combat not only created these United States but has also given us many of our most successful presidents." He lists some of those presidents with their military service.

Nagle might have pointed out, but did not, that twelve of the twenty-three presidents who served in the nineteenth century had previously served as army generals. But an even more interesting factoid is that none of the presidents who led the nation during five of our major wars had any significant military service:

1. James Madison (War of 1812);
2. James Knox Polk (War with Mexico);
3. Abraham Lincoln (Civil War - not declared);
4. Woodrow Wilson (World War I);
5. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (World War II)

Only President McKinley (Spanish American War) had significant military service. He had been a major during the Civil War.

On the face of it, then, lack of military service does not seem to have prevented past presidents from being effective leaders during our greatest wars. I am more disturbed by the fact that in today's America, only one percent of adults have served in the military. I mentioned a while ago my discomfort that service to the nation in a cause greater than one's own prosperity has become rare, rather than commonplace.

Last month, Thomas Ricks suggested in the Washington Post a concrete measure to address this problem: toss out the all-volunteer military. Reluctantly, my own thinking has been evolving in that direction.

Ricks explains: "Resuming conscription is the best way to reconnect the people with the armed services. Yes, reestablishing a draft, with all its Vietnam-era connotations, would cause problems for the military, but those could never be as painful and expensive as fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq for almost nine years. A draft would be good for our nation and ultimately for our military."

I think this is a conversation worth having.

70 Years Ago: COMINT

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, they achieved surprise by effective use of several techniques:
1. Failure to declare war in advance of the attack;
2. Radio silence during transit;
3. Use of couriers for planning instead of radio;
4. Deceptive radio transmissions (spoofing);
5. Cryptosecurity measures, including changing codes just before the operation.

Items 2 - 5 fall in the category of communications security.

Japan had been a target of US Navy Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) since WWI. A small cadre of specialists intercepted Japanese high frequency (HF) radio communications  transmitted in a specialized Japanese Morse code for Japanese Kana characters. By 1941, the US Navy had about twenty intercept stations sharing their take with OP-20-G at the headquarters on Nebraska Avenue in Washington, DC. OP-20-G directed the effort to exploit these signals, (since the intercepted signals were mostly radio communications, the specialty was known as communications intelligence, or COMINT). The intercepted signals were analyzed by traffic analysts, who reviewed the patterns of communication and extracted an electronic order of battle or EOB.

Other experts reviewed the intercepts to determine how they had been coded and encrypted, and to identify any vulnerabilities that might allow the messages to be decrypted, or "broken." The first step was to determine if the message was a code or a cipher. Ciphers could be attacked using mathematical techniques. Codes were a bit more complicated.

To break either a code or a cipher required vast quantities of message traffic for analysis. Unfortunately for COMINT purposes, the Japanese Navy had used telephone, telegraph or courier for communications in their home waters. As a result, by December, 1941, US Navy cryptanalysts were only able to break about 10% of Japan's operating code known as JN-25.

After Pearl Harbor, though, as Japan's military invaded the Philippines, Borneo, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere, they were forced to transmit vast quantities of radio traffic. By March 7, US Navy COMINT was able to break enough traffic for Admiral Nimitz to send the carriers Lexington and Yorktown to attack Japanese forces invading Salamaua and Lae on the north coast of New Guinea.

By early May, Nimitz was able to position Lexington and Yorktown in the Coral Sea and provide them with excellent information about Japanese forces and plans to invade Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea. This effectively halted Japanese advances in the Southwest Pacific.

By late May, 1942, COMINT provided Nimitz and the US Carrier task forces with complete information about Japanese plans to attack and invade Midway.

On May 26, 1942, Halsey's TF-16 with carriers Enterprise and Hornet steamed into Pearl Harbor, having missed the action in the Coral Sea by a day. After refueling and reprovisioning, Nimitz will send them back to sea under command of Raymond Spruance to take position to oppose Admiral Nagumo's four carriers approaching Midway.

The following day, USS Yorktown, heavily damaged at the battle of Coral Sea, limped into Pearl Harbor and went immediately into drydock. It was estimated that repairs would take three months. Yorktown was given three days.

Nimitz needed all three carriers, plus the additional Army, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft he had already sent to Midway as reinforcements.

He knew from COMINT what he was up against.

The attack on Midway was scheduled for June 4, 1942.

Explosive Growth In Spending? - Not

Rex Nutting, writing for Wall Street Journal's market watch, has this to say about growth in federal spending: "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree....Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

"But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s."

Remember

As we draw close to Memorial Day, I thought I would offer a link to one of my posts from a year ago. Here. It occurred to me that our recollection of time can become distorted by other experiences.

In particular, we may think it is OK for a war in a distant land to last for a decade or more. Didn't World War II go on and on? Actually, it only lasted 3 years and eight months. It just seems like it lasted forever because we still see World War II movies.

Conflict Between Military Professionals and Conservative Republicans?

In case you missed it, there's a good report in today's PostPartisan (Washington Post on line) calling attention to a number of issues where Republican positions cause problems for the military. Here is a link to the Post article. The article itself has a link to to an article by Heather Hurlburt in Democracy Arsenal. Hurlburt lists five issue: 1. Law of the Sea (I worked on this treaty thirty years ago - the Navy has always supported it); 2. Alternative energy; 3. Who jails terror suspects (professional military officers don't want to be jailers); 4. Iran (not a war the military wants); 5. Pentagon Budget (GOP wants some weapons the pentagon doesn't want).

I can think of other issues - GOP cares nothing for the troops, but a lot for contractors, for example.

As Memorial Day approaches, we should focus on the troops.

PTSD Film

Good article today in the Washington Post about a restored John Huston documentary about "shell shock" and its treatment in World War II.

We now call it PTSD and no longer consider it a psychoneurotic condition. In former times, senior officers (e.g. Patton) considered it "malingering" or worse. During World War I, British officers had more than three hundred soldiers shot for what may have been PTSD. Here is an account (possibly slanted) of how it came about that 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers were shot during that conflict.

PTSD and its effect on the lives of those suffering from it is certainly one of the cruelest consequences of war.

On Being Ready For War

A year and a half after we invaded Iraq, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was asked by a soldier why troops have to poke through dumpsters to find parts for their equipment. "We go to war with the army we have, not the army we wish we had," Rumsfeld replied. 

Six months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the US Navy with a force of seven aircraft carriers against a Japanese fleet of ten carriers, had halted the Japanese advance toward Australia, bombed Tokyo,  attacked the Gilberts, the Marshalls, Marcus Island, Tulagi, Lae and Salamaua and sunk five Japanese carriers. In doing this, the Army and Navy used the forces they started with. The US lost one carrier at Coral Sea and another at Midway. 

A year later, the US Navy had added seven new carriers to the force (though they lost two carriers in the Solomons), replaced the obsolescent Douglas Devastator torpedo planes with the much more powerful TBF Avenger, fixed the troubling problems with the Mark 14 torpedo, replaced the Grumman Wildcat with the Grumman Hellcat, kicked Japan off of Guadalcanal and sank another Japanese carrier.  

In the meantime, the navy had developed a proximity fused projectile for its 5"/38 caliber guns, shooting down the first Japanese aircraft in January 1943. For the rest of the war, we continued making improvements in equipment, training and organization. 

Did we have deficiencies at the beginning of the war? You bet!  

But our forces were ready to do what needed to be done. 

It took them three years and eight months to win that war. 

Some say the United States wasn't ready for war in 1941. 

Balderdash!