The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) (68 page)

29
. The official Navy reports credit the sighting by Smith without mentioning Dixon, though Dixon’s postwar testimony makes it clear that he, too, played a crucial role. Buckmaster to Nimitz, May 25, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, p. 3; Belote and Belote,
Titans of the Seas
, 78; Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around
, 84–85.

30
. Pederson to Buckmaster, May 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2; Dull,
Battle History
, 126; Samuel Eliot Morison,
History of United States Naval Operations in World War II
, vol. 4,
Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Action, May 1942–August, 1942
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1949), 47–48; Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around
, 87.

31
. Burch and Short are quoted in Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around
, 87–88; Office of Naval Intelligence,
Battle of the Coral Sea
, 24–25.

32
. Pederson to Buckmaster, May 16, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2. American torpedo plane pilots reported dropping nine torpedoes and making four hits. See Office of Naval Intelligence,
Battle of the Coral Sea
, 23. Taylor’s quotation is in Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around
, 86.

33
. Noel Gayler oral history (Feb. 15, 2002), Naval Historical Foundation, 6; Morison,
Coral Sea
, 49–51.

34
. Sherman,
Combat Command
, 31.

35
. Ibid., 109–10.

36
. Buckmaster to Nimitz, May 25, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, pp. 7, 40.

37
. Frederick D. Parker,
A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battle of the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians
(Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 1993), 29–30.

38
. Ronald Russell, “Sam Laser in Sky Control,” transcript available at BOMRT,
http://www.midway42.org/vets-laser.html
.

39
. Sherman,
Combat Command
, 111, 114; Buckmaster to Nimitz, May 25, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2, p. 10; Paul Stroop oral history (Sept. 13, 1969), 144, U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA; Judson Brodie interview (March 13, 2007), NMPW, 30.

40
. Sherman,
Combat Command
, 115; Judson Brodie interview (March 13, 2007), NMPW, 31.

41
. Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around
, 96.

42
. Ugaki,
Fading Victory
, 128 (diary entry of May 18, 1942).

43
. Ludlum,
They Turned the War Around
, 96, 100; Lundstrom,
Black Shoe Carrier Admiral
, 194.

44
. Sherman,
Combat Command
, 117; Walter Lord,
Incredible Victory
(New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 11; Ugaki,
Fading Victory
, 122 (diary entry of May 7, 1942).

Chapter 9

1
. Hiroyuki Agawa,
The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy
, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), 302; Matome Ugaki,
Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945
, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, trans. Masataka Chihaya (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 118 (diary entry of May 1, 1942).

2
. RADM Ko Nagasawa, quoted in Robert E. Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1972), 43; Ugaki,
Fading Victory
, 118 (diary entry of May 1, 1942); Sanematsu to Lord, Jan. 22, 1967, Walter Lord Collection, NHHC, box 18.

3
. The Japanese observer at the war game was Chihaya Masataka, who wrote an analysis of the Imperial Japanese Navy a few years later. He is quoted in Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine Dillon, eds.,
The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans
(Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1993), 348. See also Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya,
Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955), 91–92; and Office of Naval Intelligence,
The Japanese Story of the Battle of Midway: A Translation
, OPNAV P32–1002, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 2.

4
. Fuchida and Okumiya,
Midway
, 96; Agawa,
Reluctant Admiral
, 303; Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully,
Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 61–62.

5
. Ugaki,
Fading Victory
, 119, 120 (diary entry of May 4, 1942).

6
. Gordon Prange interview with Watanbe Yasuji (Oct. 6, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Gordon Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon,
Miracle at Midway
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 35. Yamamoto is quoted in John Deane Potter,
Admiral of the Pacific: The Life of Yamamoto
(London: Heinemann, 1965), 44.

7
. The “knowledgeable scholars” are Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 62–63.

8
. Ugaki,
Fading Victory
, 120 (diary entry of May 5, 1942). Turret no. 5 on
Hyūga
was removed, the barbette roofed over, and antiaircraft guns were put there. I am indebted to John Lundstrom for this information.

9
. Agawa,
Reluctant Admiral
, 305; Ugaki,
Fading Victory
, 123–24 (diary entry of May 7, 1942).

10
. Ugaki,
Fading Victory
, 125 (diary entry of May 10, 1942).

11
. Ugaki,
Fading Victory
, 127 (diary entry of May 17, 1942).

12
. Parshall and Tully,
Shattered Sword
, 66.

13
. Ibid., 64–65.

14
. Frederick D. Parker,
A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians
(Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 1993), 43–45; CINCPAC Intelligence Briefs, OP-20G File (May 10, 1942), Special Collections, Nimitz Library, USNA, 75.

15
. Joseph Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 203, and Thomas Dyer oral history (Sept. 14, 1983), 241, both in U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA; author’s interview of RADM Donald “Mac” Showers (May 4, 2010). The list of known designators (060710) is in the Layton Papers, NWC, box 26, folder 4.

16
. Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 203. See John B. Lundstrom,
The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy, December 1941–June 1942
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976).

17
. Traffic Intelligence Summaries, Combat Intelligence Unit, Fourteenth Naval District (July 16 1941—June 30 1942), Special Collections, Nimitz Library, USNA, 3:326; King to Nimitz, May 15, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:468.

18
. Nimitz to King, May 16, 1942, and the Running Summary, May 16, 1942, are both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:471, 482; King to Nimitz, May 15, 1942, is also in the Nimitz Papers, but in box 8, unnumbered page, date-time group 152130.

19
. Nimitz to Halsey, May 17, 1942, and King to Spenavo, May 18, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:491, 492.

20
. King to Nimitz, May 17 and 18, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:490, 492.

21
. Nimitz to King, May 17 and May 21, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:488, 490.

22
. The summary of air strength on Midway is from the Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:505. Spruance’s handwritten note shows 115 airplanes on Midway: Spruance Papers, NWC, box 2, folder 4. See
Appendix C
.

23
. There has been a lot of discussion about who came up with the idea for the bogus message. The account here relies heavily on RADM “Mac” Showers, who recalls the conversation between Rochefort and Holmes that took place as they were standing next to his desk in the Dungeon. See W. J. Holmes,
Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979), 90; Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 211; and Dyer oral history (Sept. 14, 1983), 241.

24
. The message (Com 14, 200050) is in Edwin Layton’s handwritten journal, May 20, 1942, Layton Papers, NWV, box 29, folder 3. William Price asserts that the man who discovered the key intercept was Yeoman Second Class William Tremblay who worked at Belconnen, though others recall that the initial discovery took place in “the Dungeon” at Hypo. What is clear is that both units played an important role in the final decryption of the messages. Willam Price interview (May 4, 2010). See also Russell,
No Right to Win
, 30–33.

25
. See the list of decrypts in Appendix III of Edwin Layton’s unpublished manuscript, “The Role of Radio Intelligence in the American-Japanese War” (which he submitted in September of 1942), in Layton Papers, NWC, box 15, folder 1. Interview of RADM Donald “Mac” Showers by the author (May 4, 2010); Henry F. Schorreck, “The Role of COMINT in the Battle of Midway,”
Cryptologic Spectrum
5, no. 3 (Summer 1975), 3–11; “Estimate of the Situation” (May 26, 1942), Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:544. Rochefort’s words are from his oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 219.

26
. Rochefort oral history (Oct. 5, 1969), 217–19. See also the Traffic Intelligence Summaries, 3:381.

27
. David Kahn,
The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967), 569–70.

28
. “Estimate of the Situation” (May 26, 1942), Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:516, 520.