Path to Midway: The Dungeon (Part 1)

“You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.” Thus read a sign hanging on the desk of Lieutenant Commander Thomas H. Dyer — one of the Navy’s top cryptanalysts.
The “here” to which the sign referred was COM 14’s decrypt unit, or Station HYPO as it was secretly known. The station was housed in the basement of the administrative building at Pearl Harbor and was affectionately dubbed by its inhabitants as “the dungeon.” The officers and enlisted Sailors who worked there were codebreakers charged with tracking the Imperial Japanese Navy in the war in the Pacific. This is their story.