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Essay on the significance of code breaking in ww2
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III. World War II benefits of Cryptography
On June 4, 1942, after a fierce three-day battle, U.S. pilots sank all four Japanese aircraft carriers in Yamamoto's task force, effectively turning the tide in the Pacific. On December 7, 1941, Japanese military forces attacked the United States naval fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The surprise attack was devastating to the U.S. Navy. Nearly every American plane on Oahu was destroyed; three cruisers, three destroyers, and eight battleships were severely damaged, and two battleships were destroyed; over 2,300 U.S. servicemen passed. Over the next three and a half years, in a series of fierce sea and island battles, American forces managed to push the Japanese empire back to its own shores. They were able to do so not only through courage and resolve, but also through the efforts of hundreds of men and women who labored in secrecy, many of them twelve hours a day, seven days a week, cracking the codes that Japanese forces used to transmit messages. In April of that year, decrypted messages revealed that Japanese forces were preparing for an assault on Port Moresby, an Australian base in New Guinea, on May 7. In response, U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz moved his fleet into the Coral Sea between New Guinea and Australia. While the ensuing two-day Battle of Coral Sea was considered a draw, U.S. forces inflicted enough damage on the Japanese navy to force it to withdraw.
In the Battle of Midway the Japanese commander Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned to assemble an aircraft carrier task force, launch a diversionary raid off the Aleutian Islands, and lure the U.S. Navy to Midway Island and into a decisive battle that would destroy what remained of the American fl...
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...rthy after the victory.
After the victory at Midway, General George Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, talks about the impact of Cryptographer during the war and how it gave the U.S. the needed advantage to take out the Japanese fleet, “as a result of Cryptanalysis we were able to concentrate our limited forces to meet their naval advance on Midway when we otherwise would have been 3,000 miles out of place.”
Cryptography during the 1940’s when the U.S. became were involved in World War II had a huge beneficial impact on the outcome of many key battles. Its impacts helped to snowball certain Military and Naval strategies because of their knowledge of the enemies next offensive threats. The improvements made over decades to the study of cryptology, made deciphering codes more efficient and ultimately turned the tables for the allies after the Battle of Midway.
In May of 1942, Japanese Admiral Isorosku Yamamoto devised a plan to draw the US Pacific fleet into battle where he could completely destroy it. To accomplish this master plan of his, he sought out the invasion of Midway Island which would provide a base for the Japan troops to attack Hawaii. Unfortunately for Yamamoto, America decrypted Japanese radio transmissions and Admiral Chester Nimitz was able to establish a counter attack against this offensive. Nimitz sent three aircraft carriers, The USS Enterprise, The USS Hornet and The USS Yorktown to destroy the Japanese. This is just a short overview of The Battle of Midway, or as commonly referred to as, the battle that changed the war. People argue that it had no affect on the war, but those critics couldn’t be farther from the truth. The Battle of Midway was the turning point of the war because it fully enters America into the war, it kicked off the Pacific Campaign, and it had Japan on the defensive, thus preventing them from helping The Axis Forces.
Prior to the dispatch of September 24, the information which the Japanese sought and obtained about Pearl Harbor followed the general pattern of their interest in American Fleet movements in other localities. One might suspect this type of conventional espionage. With the dispatch of September 24, 1941, and those which followed, there was a significant and ominous change in the character of the information which the Japanese Government sought and obtained. The espionage then directed was of an unusual character outside the realm of reasonable suspicion. It was no longer merely directed to ascertaining the general whereabouts of ships of the fleet. It was directed to the presence of particular ships in particular areas; to such minute detail as what ships were double-docked at the same wharf….These Japanese instructions and reports pointed to an attack by Japan upon the ships in Pearl Harbor. The information sought and obtained, with such painstaking detail had no other conceivable usefulness from a military
To begin, the attack on Pearl Harbour was devastating to U.S. naval capabilities in the Pacific at the onset of their entry into the war. Japanese officials had grown tired of the U.S. oil embargo, which was meant to limit their territorial expansion and aggression in South-East Asia as well as China, and as negotiations weren’t reaching any conclusions they decided that the only course of action was a first strike on the aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbour to cripple U.S. naval capability in the Pacific (Rosenberg 1). The attack, which lasted about two hours, had resulted in the sinking of four battleships, among ...
One of Great Britain’s most important naval developments was the founding of the top-secret Office of Naval Intelligence, better known as Room 40. Specializing in cryptography, “the science of writing in secret code” in order to hide sensitive information, Room 40’s cryptanalysts worked around the clock to break the secret code. Decryption is vital in secret transmissions concerning strategic war movements, as the enemy will be looking to intercept information concerning movements and positioning. Great Britain was aided in that the German Navy started the war with three primary codes, and within four months the British Admiralty possessed physical copies of all three of them.
This paper will compare Gordon W. Prange's book "At Dawn We Slept - The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor" with the film "Tora! Tora! Tora!" directed by Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, and Toshio Masuda. While the film provides little background to the attack, its focal point is on the Pearl Harbor assault and the inquiry of why it was not prevented, or at least foreseen in adequate time to decrease damage. Prange's book examines the assault on Pearl Harbor from both the Japanese and American viewpoints to gain a global view of the situation and the vast provision undertaken by Japanese intelligence.
World War II, along with its numerous battles, brought great tension between two of the strongest countries during the 1940s: the United States and Japan. Conflict between these two countries started with Japan’s push past Chinese borders into Manchuria in search of the natural resources Japan lacks. At first, the United States avoided military action with Japan by waging economic warfare on them. This economic pressure included the passing of the Neutrality Act, which prohibited the sale of weapons to nations at war (Nash 513). Additionally, the United States placed oil embargoes on Japan hoping it would force Japan to shut down military operations in China. Japan, at a critical decision point, decided to bomb the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. On December 7th, 1941 at 6 a.m., Japan pilots bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor, taking out the United States’ strongest battleships, killing thousands of people, and destroying hundreds of planes (Sherman). The day after Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war on Japan. Over the next few years, the United States and Japan fought fierce battles for dominance in the Pacific Ocean. One of the most important battles during the United States and Japanese war was the Battle of Midway. Japan was destroying the United States at sea, until the Battle of Midway gave the United States Pacific Fleet an edge on Japanese forces. The Battle of Midway was the most important naval engagement of World War II: it was a decisive battle that allowed the United States to be the dominant naval power in the Pacific and it marked a turning point in World War II for the United States.
During the Pacific portion of World War II, increasingly frequent instances of broken codes plagued the United States Marine Corps. Because the Japanese had become adept code breakers, at one point a code based on a mathematical algorithm could not be considered secure for more than 24 hours. Desperate for an answer to the apparent problem, the Marines decided to implement a non-mathematical code; they turned to Philip Johnston's concept of using a coded Navajo language for transmissions.
“AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.” This is the message sent out by radioman Kyle Boyer at 7:58 a.m. Sunday December 7, 1941; a date which will live in infamy. The empire of Japan had attacked the United States’ Pacific Fleet based in Pearl Harbor. For months the US Intelligence community, as well as others around the world, had been intercepting and decoding transmissions from mainland Japan to their diplomats and spies in the US. We had cracked their Purple Code, and knew exactly what military intelligence was being transmitted back and forth. The Dutch also cracked Purple and informed our government of the Japanese plan and were shocked to hear reports that we were taken by surprised. Even more disturbing, months before the attack a British double agent, Dusko Popov, codenamed Tricycle, turned over to the F.B.I. detailed plans of the Japanese air raid, which he had obtained from the Germans. The government had the information, and did nothing with it.
Even before the battle started, America saw his attack coming. Japan had bombed the Dutch harbor in Alaska on the days of June 3rd and 4th. Japan landed there instead of on the islands of Attu and Kiska, in fear the United States might be there. There attacks failed when the plan to get the American fleet from Midway to aid the freshly bombed Dutch harbor. At 0900 hours an American patrol boat spotted the Japanese fleet seven hundred miles from Midway. At that point admiral Soroku Yamamoto’s plans of a sneak attack were over. Admiral fletcher commanded the U.S.S. Yorktown before it was sunk by the Japanese. Then at 0750, japan spots nine enemy (American) planes fifteen miles out. Tones, a Japanese cruiser, opened fire on the American pilots. Almost instantly if an American bomber plane were hit it would explode and go down. The bombers dropped their torpedoes to far from their targets, so the torpedoes didn’t land a single blow to Japan. At 1040 japan sent from Hiryu,...
On December 7th 1941, Japanese Planes and submarines attacked the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor. This event singlehandedly brought the U.S from its then neutral stance in World War Two to a fighting member of the “Allied Powers.” Pearl Harbor was the first of a long series of confrontations between the U.S and the Japanese in an effort to gain control of the Pacific. Unlike the “War in Europe” the Pacific strategy was dominated by naval and aerial battles, with the occasional land-based “Island Hopping” Campaign. As such, one of the most important factors in the war in the pacific was Fleet Size, the more ships a country could send to war, the better. Pearl Harbor was the Japanese’s way of trying to deal with the massive U.S Pacific fleet. However, Pearl Harbor was not the turning point of the war. After December 7th the United States began work on numerous technological developments which would ultimately help them in one of the most important battles of WWII, the largest naval confrontation of the war, The Battle of Midway. The battle, which took place from June 4th to June 7th , 1942 is widely considered the turning point of the Pacific Theater (James & Wells). Through the Post-Pearl Harbor desire for “Revenge” and various technological advantages including code breaking and radar, the U.S were able to outsmart the Japanese at Midway and ultimately win the battle, eventually leading to a victory in the Pacific.
It was a Sunday morning, on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor, US naval base located on Hawaii, was attacked by the Japanese. They caught unguarded the whole nation, and for that, this attack is considered one of the top ten failures of the US intelligence. The Japanese were able to attack Pearl Harbor by surprise because of the mindset of US officials, whom they saw Japanese as a weak enemy, who wouldn’t risk attacking US territory, caused by a supremacy factor; As well as the not good enough US intelligence efficiency to encrypt Japanese codes, and the handling of such information. After the negotiations between the Japanese and the United States ended, there was no doubt that they would make an attack, but they didn’t know the target of it.
As the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 the United States officially entered World War Two. The Japanese government later learned later that this single event sets off an explosion that subsequently caused the United States to attack the Midway Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Pearl Harbor was one of the United States largest naval bases and the largest in the Pacific Ocean. This attack ceased all trade with Japan and officially added Japan as one of the US enemies. With a new world war started it created new concerns for the army. “World War II introduced a whole new set of problems in naval tactics” (Smith, 1). The main change driving these changes was the fact that aircraft carriers became more prevalent and common in every major countries naval force. Japan was able to pull off the Pearl Harbor attack as a result of aircraft carriers to launch their airplanes. As a result of the battles leading up to the Battle of Midway and conflicts with Japan this created a lot larger of an impact on WWII as a whole and to boost unity in America leading to a more prosperous period of history following the war.
The Battle of Midway came about when the Japanese wished to extend their Pacific control, broaching the idea to initiate a battle against the U.S. Navy. After the Japanese success at Pearl Harbor and their success coming to a standstill at Coral Sea one month earlier, Japanese commander, Admiral Yamamoto, had belief that it was necessary to hold a full battle at Midway as a deciding engagement. He thought that the Japanese had an increased chance of success, being that the U.S. had a certain disadvantage, only having two carriers since they had sunk U.S.S. Yorktown at Coral Sea, compared to the Japanese's 6 carriers, but the ship had been repaired. He also wanted to get revenge for the Doolittle Raid, an air attack on Tokyo performed by U.S. forces. To receive the Pacific gain Yamamoto so desired, he wanted to first attract a large portion of the U.S. fleet away from Midway, where they would attack, bringing the American Navy a fatal surprise. Yamamoto attempted to pull this idea through by launching an attack on the Alaskan Coast to drag the Americans North, then proceeding to attack on Midway. The Alaskan trap was just a waste of resources, the submarines sent to attack the U.S. were too late, the U.S. already knew of their plans. To the Japanese's surprise, U.S. forces were awaiting the Japanese arrival on June 4, 1942. Yamamoto had to con...
In the morning hours of December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked the Hawaiian islands at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese had been feeling the pressures of World War II (WWII) as did many others. With the resources of the Japanese dwindling, the Japanese decided to attack the U.S. while simultaneously planning the attack during the negotiations of continued peace between our two countries. The Japanese were able to cover up there planning for nearly a year. Planning for the attack and ultimately war in the pacific, started in January of 1941, and was finalized during the war games in November of 1941. The U.S. on the other hand would become a reactive force after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The inability to crack the Japanese code lead, to a lack of intelligence during this time making the plan of attack for the Japanese a successful one. It would seem that the year of planning and the strategies laid out in the “Combined Fleet Operations Top Secret Order 1” of the Japanese navy would become a reality in the pacific, allowing for an easy sweep of the military targets for the Japanese fleet.
The Battle of Midway was a decisive naval battle in the Pacific of World War II between the United states and Japan at that point in time. Between 4 and 7 June 1942. Six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the united states defeated japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of world war II. Thanks in part to major advances in coding breaking intelligence. Therefore the united states was able to counter Japan’s planned ambush of its few remaining aircraft carriers, inflicting permanent damage on the Japanese Navy.