[ARC5] How the U.S. Cracked Japan's 'Purple Encryption"

[Joe Connor]

Ken, if Japanese naval officers said that in the post-war debriefings, they may have been trying tell their interrogators what they thought they wanted to hear. I think they knew full well on 12/7/41 the importance of the fuel tanks and the repair facilities at Pearl Harbor. I base this on the following:
1. In the Pearl Harbor attack, the main Japanese priorities were taking out the ships in the harbor and the American airbases on Oahu. There is only some much they could do in a single raid. That's why they didn't hit the fuel tanks and dry docks in the raid. 
2. When the attackers got back to their carriers, they begged Nagumo to launch a second strike to take out the fuel tanks and repair facilities. He declined because he didn't know where the U.S. carriers were, and he came in for a lot of criticism for not launching a second strike.
3. When the Japanese took out Cavite, the Asiatic Fleet's main base in the Philippines, two days later, they obliterated the fuel tanks and repair facilities. In that raid, they didn't have to worry about American airbases because those had been taken out two days earlier. This shows that they knew of the importance of the fuel tanks and dry docks.

Joe Connor 

    On Tuesday, December 6, 2016 3:48 PM, Kenneth G. Gordon <kgordon2006 at frontier.com> wrote:
 
 

 On 6 Dec 2016 at 20:00, Joe Connor wrote:

> Yamamoto recognized from the start that Japan lacked the resources to stand 
> toe-to-toe with the U.S. in a long war. When the U.S. geared up its industrial 
> production, it would overwhelm Japan. Yamamoto realized Japan's only chance 
> was a quick knockout, and that was his plan.
> 
> First, he would cripple the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. He came close but luckily 
> for us, the carriers were at sea, and this was going to be a carrier war, not a 
> battleship war.

Japan's biggest screw up was missing the fuel dumps on Pearl. If they had destroyed those, 
we would have been pretty much dead in the water for many, many months.

I remember reading some time ago that during an interview by our military with the 
Japanese commanders after the war that when this was brought to their attention, their 
mouths dropped open and they appeared absolutely dumb-founded.
 
> Second, he planned to lure the remnants of the Pacific fleet out to sea, inflict a 
> decisive defeat on the fleet, and force the U.S. to sue for peace. That was 
> Midway. Without the code-break activities, his plan might have worked.

Maybe. Yes, we were more than lucky...

Ken W7EKB

---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

______________________________________________________________
ARC5 mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/arc5
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:ARC5 at mailman.qth.net

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

 
   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/arc5/attachments/20161206/02378df2/attachment.html>