On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 13:55:13 -0700, "Jay Beckman"
wrote:

That, in a nutshell, is how they knew for sure they'd broken the code(s).

The US let it be known (in what circles, I'm not sure...probably feeding bad
info to spies...) that Midway was running out of water.

Say the Japanese
codeword for water was Alligator and the word for Midway was Lotus.

The US identified a message saying that Lotus was running out of Alligator
so we're going to attack Lotus...BINGO! We knew they were coming.

American Intelligence had been picking up traffic accasionally
referring to "AF", which Cmdr Joseph Rochefort, who was head of
intelligence in Hawaii, thought was Midway.

He convinced Nimitz to have Midway broadcast a message, in the clear,
so that Japanese listening stations would be sure to hear it, that
their water distillation plant was out of order, and they were running
out of water.

When Rochefort's people picked up a Japanese massage saying that "AF"
was out of water, it confirmed his suspicions.

Even so, a lot of Navy bigwigs still thought it was a Japanese ruse.,
and that the real target of the Japanese was the west coast.


At least that's the way I've read it was done.

But, I believe the OP is correct in stating that they put a major iron lid
on the fact that we were listening "outside Yamamoto's door."

Jay Beckman
PP-ASEL
Chandler, AZ