Interesting that both subjects are on our list; you see the breaking of both
the Japanese code and the Enigma radically changed the course of the war
both in the Atlantic and the Pacific. If you want to see a fairly accurate
portrayal of the main characters and battle rent the movie "Midway" with
Henry Fonda. One thing not mentioned in Deny's otherwise excellent recount
of the battle is that the whole strategy Nimitz employed hinged on his
confidence of our code breaking - and he instructed our people to send in
the open the statement that the water (desalination??) - something to do
with water - was down at Midway.

Sure enough in the Japanese code a day or so later the code for Midway was
mentioned along with the other traffic. Then with all the encoded battle
orders Nimitz knew that the Japanese were going to Midway.

Nimitz gambled the rest of his Pacific Fleet on this belief.

And yet with all this the battle still hinged on critical decisions both
Nagumo and Spruance made.

I have read an interesting book entitled "what if" - essays written by
historians on a simple turn of a seemingly insignificant act - how history
could have been profoundly changed. The essays go from times of ancient
Israel and the Assyrians to - Midway - what if a sharp Japanese Lieutenant -
in monitoring the American traffic - thought that the open reference to
Midway was a trap - and how could they turn this to their advantage?

Enigma - it is said that Churchill allowed Coventry to be bombed rather than
tip his hand and tell the Germans that he knew their codes - so he had to
sacrifice how many thousands of civilians in the terrible bombing to keep
the secret? I have received a book for Christmas entitled "Seizing the
Enigma - the Race to break the German U Boat Codes 1933-1943" by David Kahn.

One more thing on codes and secrecy - did anyone catch the NOVA (PBS program
in the US)  - the episode that dealt with our atomic spies and Los Alamos?
Two things stuck with me - the FBI knew that there were another 2-3 spies
for Stalin that were never caught because a mole in Washington tipped the
Russians that we had broken their code.

They went into detail how the Russian code worked - simple and ingenious and
nearly unbreakable even today (with the right key)

Bill

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