The Battle of Midway
The battle of Midway started on June 4th of 1942, between the Americans and the Japanese. It was six months after the attack of Pearl Harbor, and the Americans were still weak from the blow. Because of that, they had less ships than the Japanese, plus a lot less aircraft carriers. On Midway Island, the Japanese were set for the Americans to come after them.
The US Navy was mostly demolished from Japan’s attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprising military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941.
A major person the battle of Midway was Isoroku Yamamoto. He was a Japanese Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific War. He led Japan in the attack but was shot down and died when the US cracked the code and tracked his plane.
Cryptography was a huge influence in this battle. Captain Joseph J. Rochefort led the base HYPO that successfully cracked the code from Japan! It said that they would strike the U.S. carrier ships in late May to early June.
Though they had planned the big attack, there were many flaws about the cryptography used from Japan. First, the Japanese Navy did not send their codes or orders safely. They sent them very freely when then the Americans could easily break their code. They had confidence in themselves that they could break the code because they owned a Japanese Code Book. This book made it easier to decode the secret messages. There was one problem about the book though, there were more than 90,000 phrases in the book and had to be looked over carefully. Also, Japan’s technique was weak and easily broken.
As a result of the battle, the US cracked the code and had had won the battle. They had lost four carriers, while the U.S only lost one in the fight. These results would have been different if the U.S. hadn’t cracked Japan’s code.
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11 comments:
That is so cool how we (the US) deciphered the code after we had a big disadvantage. What would have happened if the US had not deciphered the code?
To answer you Emma, the U.S. probably would have lost the war because of the mass destruction of the navy. And if there was no navy, we would have not been able to win other wars using our navy.
I didn't realize that is the US didn't crack the code, they would have lost. Cryptography can play a really big part wars and battles. Do you know what exactly what they code was about? It sounds really interesting!!
Wow! That is very cool that if we didn't decipher that code we would have lost WW2. Also I like how your format is very organized so it makes your writing very easy to understand and interesting.
If you didn't know, The Japenese Commander and Chief guy after winning a battle said," I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." I guess he was right after the U.S. nuked Japan. Also, it is lucky that our aircraft carriers were out at sea or we wouldn't have stood a chance. The Japenese were some of the first to realize how powerful the aircraft carriers could be. That is why they made so many.
I herd on CNN 10 that the air strips used in the battle of midway for launching planes are still here today. I also think it is cool that the USA was able to intercept the code before the Japanese could bomb anything and destroy the island.
The blog post was great and very descriptive. I was amazed at how the decryption of the code made all the difference in the war. For example, if we (U.S.) didn't crack it we most likely wouldn't of won.
This was a very interesting post. I think that it is very important that we figured out this code or we wouldn't have won the battle. What would happen if we had lost and couldn't decipher it?
What if America did not crack the code? Then Japan would probably win the battle, take over the US and Germany would win the war.
I really liked your article on the Battle of Midway. It turns out that cryptography can play a big role in battles. If the Japanese had won that battle and we hadn't cracked the code, we would have no navy. Really interesting!!!!
What could have happened if the code had not been cracked and if Japan was not so careless about how they sent the code?
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