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Army and Navy cryptologic organizations had a long and inglorious history of failing to coordinate their efforts, dating back to the 1920s.
In 1940, when the Army’s success in breaking Japanese diplomatic cipher systems became known to the Navy, there ensued lengthy and difficult negotiations to determine how the effort was to be divided. They finally arrived at a Solomonic solution by which the Army processed Japanese diplomatic traffic originating (i.e., cipher date) on even days of the month while the Navy would process traffic from odd days. This resulted in a fair division politically, but from the standpoint of cryptanalytic continuity it was a horror. To make matters even worse, there was in those days no thought, no concept, of centralized and coordinated intelligence analysis. What little analysis and interpretation was done (and there was very little indeed) was accomplished by each service on the traffic which it had decrypted, leaving for each a checkerboard pattern of information in which every other day was left out. This almost inconceivable situation persisted until 1942, when diplomatic traffic was, by mutual agreement, left to the Army, while the Navy concentrated on Japanese naval material.
In 1940, when the Army’s success in breaking Japanese diplomatic cipher systems became known to the Navy, there ensued lengthy and difficult negotiations to determine how the effort was to be divided. They finally arrived at a Solomonic solution by which the Army processed Japanese diplomatic traffic originating (i.e., cipher date) on even days of the month while the Navy would process traffic from odd days. This resulted in a fair division politically, but from the standpoint of cryptanalytic continuity it was a horror. To make matters even worse, there was in those days no thought, no concept, of centralized and coordinated intelligence analysis. What little analysis and interpretation was done (and there was very little indeed) was accomplished by each service on the traffic which it had decrypted, leaving for each a checkerboard pattern of information in which every other day was left out. This almost inconceivable situation persisted until 1942, when diplomatic traffic was, by mutual agreement, left to the Army, while the Navy concentrated on Japanese naval material.
A Rocky Start for Army-Navy SIGINT Effort!
Posted from stationhypo.com
Posted 4 y ago
Responses: 2
Posted 4 y ago
Good share PO1 William "Chip" Nagel … reminds me of the Cool Hand Luke line from the movie: "What we have here, is failure to Communicate".
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TSgt Jack Oberholtzer
4 y
My favorite movie ever. Not sure why, saw it the first time as just a kid, but it has always stuck with me.
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