42. Running Summary, Feb. 26, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:246.
43. King to Nimitz, and Brown to Nimitz, both Feb. 26, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, 8:242, 244, 255.
44. Lundstrom, First Team, 124–27.
45. Running Summary, Feb. 23 and 25, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:243–44, 245; Ludlum, They Turned the War Around, 37–38; Morison, Rising Sun, 387–89; Lundstrom, First Team, 131; Roosevelt to Churchill, March 17, 1942, in Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, ed. Warren F. Kimball (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1:415–16.
46. Nimitz to King, March 23, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:548; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 96; Running Summary, March 11, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:267. Captain James M. Steele replaced McCormick as the keeper of the Running Summary in April.
47. Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 74–76.
Chapter 5
1. H. P. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 15; John J. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Plans for Conquest after Pearl Harbor (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), 124.
2. H. P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies to April 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982), 436.
3. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 96.
4. Sadao Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 171–72, 246–50.
5. Hiroyuki Agawa, The Reluctant Admiral: Yamamoto and the Imperial Navy, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), 213, 225; Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 250–52, 281.
6. Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 27.
7. Prange interview of Watanabe Yasuji (Sept. 25, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 43–44; Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 107; Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 294; Matome Ugaki, Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, ed. Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, trans. Masataka Chi-haya (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 68 (diary entry of Jan. 5, 1942).
8. Quoted in Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 79; Prange interview of Watanabe (Feb. 3–4, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
9. Paul S. Dull, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978), 108–9.
10. Mark R. Peattie, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001), 67–70.
11. Dull, Battle History, 109–10.
12. Donald MacIntyre, Fighting Admiral: The Life of Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Somerville, G.C.B., G.B.E, D.S.O (London: Evans Brothers, 1961), 179.
13. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 485; Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, 184–86; Inoue Shigeyoshi, “A New Theory on the Armament Plan,” Jan. 1941, quoted in Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 224–25.
14. Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 61, 64–65; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 32.
15. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 294–95; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 32–37.
16. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 264; Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 90–91. According to Lieutenant Commander Ishiguro Susumu, Yamaguchi’s communications officer, Yamaguchi was eager to attack again and was angry when Nagumo ignored him. Ishiguro interview, Goldstein Collection, Prange Papers, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh, box 21, folder 37. I am grateful to Jon Parshall for bringing this interview to my attention.
17. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 62 (diary entry of Dec. 25, 1941); Yamamoto to Navy Minister Oikawa, Jan. 7, 1941, quoted in Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, eds., The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans (Washington, DC: Brassey’s 1993), 117.
18. Ugaki, Fading Victory, 75 (diary entry of Jan. 14, 1942); Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 28.
19. Stephan, Hawaii under the Rising Sun, 109–21; Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 33.
20. Craig L. Symonds, Decision at Sea: Five Naval Battles that Shaped American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 206–7.
21. Ibid.
22. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 51; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, chapter 2.
23. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 48–51; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 81–82.
24. Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 284; Hugh Bicheno, Midway (London: Cassel, 2001), 73–77.
25. The substance of this argument comes from interviews of Miyo by Robert E. Barde (January, 1966), in Barde, “The Battle of Midway: A Study in Command” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1971), 32–33, and of Watanabe by Gordon Prange (Feb. 3–4, 1966 and Sept. 25, 1964), in Prange Papers, UMD, box 17. See also Agawa, Reluctant Admiral, 295–96; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 68–71; and Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1955), 82–85.
26. Prange interviews of Watanabe (Feb. 3–4, 1966) and (Sept. 25, 1964), both in Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
27. Prange interview of Watanabe (Feb. 3–4, 1966), and Miyo (May 6, 1966), both in Prange Papers, UMD, box 17; Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 72.
28. Willmott, Barrier and Javelin, 76.
29. Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword, 37–38.
Chapter 6
1. Theodore Taylor, The Magnificent Mitscher (New York: Norton, 1954; Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 20–21. Citations are to the Naval Institute Press edition.
2. Ibid., 20–27; 1910 Lucky Bag, USNA.
3. Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 30; Paolo E. Coletta, Bald Eagle: Admiral Marc A. Mitscher and U.S. Naval Aviation (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1997), 18.
4. Mitscher to Frances Mitscher, Aug. 17, 1917, Mitscher Papers, NHHC.
5. Coletta, Bald Eagle, 16, 25–30; Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 63–66.
6. Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 78.
7. Mitscher to Frances Mitscher, Aug. 17, 1942, Mitscher Papers, NHHC; Bernard M. Stern (1974), 47, and Stephen Jurika (April 1, 1976), 1:492–3, both in U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA.
8. The shipmate was Tookies Bright; the 18-year-old helmsman was Richard Nowatski. Both are quoted in Coletta, Bald Eagle, 91, 108. The exchange with Gee is in Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 110–11.
9. Taylor, Magnificent Mitscher, 112.
10. D. B. Duncan to King, Feb. 4, 1942, King Papers, NHHC, Series I, box 1. At the end of Duncan’s report, King scrawled the comment: “Excellent, K.”
11. Duane Schultz, The Doolittle Raid (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 5–10.
12. Ibid., 17.
13. King to FDR, March 5, 1942, King Papers, Series I, box 1, NHHC. The document is also printed as Appendix V in Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), 532.
14. Buell, Master of Sea Power, 532; Lowell Thomas and Edward Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 158.
15. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, with Carroll V. Glines, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 28–34; Thomas and Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography, 13–45; Schultz, The Doolittle Raid, 25.
16. Doolittle and Gaines, I Could Never, 98; Dik Alan Daso, Doolittle: Aerospace Visionary (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003), 18–21; Schultz, Doolittle Raid, 31–32.
17. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 12.
18. Henry Miller (May 23, 1973), 1:30–32; and James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 10, both in U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA.
19. Henry Miller oral history (May 23, 1973), 33.
20. Richard Cole interview (Aug. 8, 20
00), NMPW, 27.
21. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), USNA, 20. This story is repeated in virtually every Doolittle biography, but Doolittle seems to have told it first to Carroll V. Glines, who included it in his book Doolittle’s Tokyo Raiders (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1964), 53–54.
22. Nimitz to Mrs. Nimitz, March 22, 1942, Nimitz Diary #1, NHHC; William F. Halsey, with J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York: Whittlesey House, 1947), 101.
23. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug.3, 1987), 15–16.
24. Prange et al., Miracle at Midway (New York: McGraw Hill, 1982), 111; James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 22.
25. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 31. The Japanese routinely kept all their planes on the hangar deck, bringing them up only for launching. That was one reason why they carried fewer planes on their carriers.
26. Henry Miller oral history (May 23, 1973), 1:37; and James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 27. Mitscher to Nimitz, April 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2.
27. Clayton Fisher, “Officer and Enlisted Airmen,” The Roundtable Forum, April 24, 2010; Stephen Jurika oral history (March 17, 1976), 1:457; Henry Miller oral history (May 23, 1973), 1:43; James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 23, 1978), 15.
28. Richard E. Cole interview (Aug. 8, 2000), 36, NMPW; Mitscher to Nimitz, April 28, 1942, Action Reports, reel 2.
29. Richard Best interview (Aug. 11, 1995), NMPW, 23.
30. Ibid.; Thomas and Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography, 178–79; Doolittle and Gaines, I Could Never, 4.
31. Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 101.
32. John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 148; interview of Gilbert Martin and Paul McKay (Sept. 2000), NMPW, 181.
33. Thomas and Jablonski, Doolittle: A Biography, 181.
34. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 19, and Stephen Jurika oral history (March 17, 1976), 1:470–71.
35. Doolittle to Arnold, June 5, 1942, available at http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar; Doolittle and Glines, I Could Never, 8; James H. Macia interview (July 21, 2000), NMPW.
36. James A. Doolittle oral history (Aug. 3, 1987), 6.
37. Ibid.; Doolittle and Glines, I Could Never, 8–9.
38. Quentin Reynolds, The Amazing Mr. Doolittle: A Biography of Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953), 209–12; Doolittle and Glines, I Could Never, 10–11.
39. The propaganda is quoted in Glines, Doolittle’s Tokyo Raiders, 337; Watanabe’s statement is from an interview by Gordon Prange (Sept. 25, 1964), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
Chapter 7
1. Two excellent general summaries of the code-breaking wars in early 1942 are Ronald Lewin, The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982), and John Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (New York: Random House, 1995), Also essential are the memoirs of W. J. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets: U.S. Naval Intelligence Operations in the Pacific during World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979), and Edwin T. Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: Morrow, 1985). I am indebted to William Price and Rear Admiral Donald “Mac” Showers, USN (Ret.) for their help with this chapter.
2. Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, 210–14; Layton, And I Was There, 29; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 13; David Kahn, The Reader of Gentlemen’s Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004).
3. Layton, And I Was There, 32.
4. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 3; Layton, And I Was There, 33; Ronald W. Russell, No Right to Win: A Continuing Dialogue with Veterans of the Battle of Midway (New York: iUniverse, 2006), 38; Joseph J. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 5.
5. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 6.
6. John Winton, Ultra in the Pacific: How Breaking Japanese Codes and Ciphers Affected Naval Operations against Japan 1941–45 (London: Cooper, 1993), 6.
7. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 104.
8. Ibid., 99.
9. Edward Layton oral history (May 30, 1970), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 137; 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), 16.
10. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 16; William Price, “Why There Was a Battle of Midway,” lecture presented at the U.S. Navy Memorial, Washington, DC, June 4, 2009.
11. Lewin, American Magic, 55. The example of how “east” might be encrypted is borrowed from Russell, No Right to Win, 28–30.
12. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 131; the decrypted message (050202) is from the Layton Papers, NWC, box 26, folder 4. See also Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 60.
13. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 54
14. Interview of Rear Admiral Donald “Mac” Showers by the author (May 4, 2010); Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 110–17, 126. Some of those who worked with Rochefort in the “dungeon” were subsequently angered by the popular portrayal of him as weirdly eccentric, though Rochefort himself later remarked, “If you desire to be a real cryptanalyst, being a little nuts helps.” Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 13.
15. Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 34; Layton oral history (May 31, 1970), 124–25.
16. Parker, Priceless Advantage, 16–17; Layton, And I Was There, 259.
17. Layton oral history (May 30, 1970), 167.
18. King to Nimitz, May 4, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:431; Layton oral history (May 30, 1971), 14–15.
19. Layton oral history (May 30, 1970), 79.
20. Parker, Priceless Advantage, 19, 22. MacArthur in particular was skeptical of the conclusions offered by the cryptanalysts and preferred to rely on “hard” intelligence gleaned by scout planes and submarines.
21. Ibid., 108; Rochefort oral history (Aug. 14, 1969), 26; Rochefort oral history (Sept. 21, 1969), 145.
22. Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 65; Parker, Priceless Advantage, 18, 20; John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 120–22.
23. Layton oral history (May 30 and 31, 1970), 108, 120; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 72; author interview of Donald Showers (May 4, 2010).
24. Parker, Priceless Advantage, 25; Frederick C. Sherman, Combat Command: The American Aircraft Carriers in the Pacific War (New York: Dutton, 1950), 92; Nimitz to King, April 9, 1942; Running Summary, April 18, 1942 (italics in original); and King to Nimitz, April 18, 1942, all in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:501–5.
25. Traffic Intelligence Summary, Combat Intelligence Unit, Fourteenth Naval District (April 22, 1942), 3:154; Holmes, Double-Edged Secrets, 72.
26. Nimitz to King, April 17, 1942, Nimitz Papers, Operational Archives, NHHC, box 1:514.
27. Layton, And I Was There, 367–68; Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, 300; Layton oral history (May 31, 1970), 137; Parker, Priceless Advantage, 18.
28. Rochefort oral history (Sept. 21, 1969), 174–75.
29. “Estimate of the Situation,” April 22, 1942, and Nimitz to Fitch, April 19, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:375, 516, 518–19. See also Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 124–26.
30. Fletcher to Leary (copy King), March 29, 1942, and King to Fletcher, March 30, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:322; Joseph M. Worthington (June 7, 1972), U.S. Naval Institute Oral History Collection, USNA, 193 (Worthington was commanding officer of the USS Benham);Judson Brodie in
terview (March 13, 2007), NMPW, 24–25.
31. King to Nimitz, April 24, 1942, and Running Summary, April 24, 1942, both in Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:409, 411; “Minutes of Conversation between CominCh and CinCPac, Saturday, April 25, 1942,” King Papers, NHHC, Series II, box 10; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 126–27. By coincidence, April 29th was also Fletcher’s birthday—he turned 57.
32. Lewin, American Magic, 92.
33. E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), 68–69.
Chapter 8
1. John B. Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral: Frank Jack Fletcher at Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 136.
2. Richard W. Bates, The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1 to May 11 Inclusive, 1942: Strategical and Tactical Analysis (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 1947), 7–12; Prange interview of Genda Minoru (Sept. 5, 1966), Prange Papers, UMD, box 17.
3. Jonathan B. Parshall and Anthony P. Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 61–63. See also chapter 9.
4. Nimitz to Fletcher, April 22, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 1:399.
5. John B. Lundstrom, “A Failure of Radio Intelligence: An Episode in the Battle of the Coral Sea,” Cryptologia 7, no. 2 (1983), 115.
6. Nimitz to King, Feb. 25, 1942, Nimitz Papers, NHHC, box 8:545; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 141.
7. Richard W. Bates, in the semiofficial study The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1 to May 11 Inclusive, 1942, insisted that by sending Takagi and Hara around the eastern end of the Solomon Islands, they were seeking a “Cannae”—a double envelopment—of American forces in the Coral Sea and concluded that Fletcher was irresponsible to let Hara get in behind him. John Lundstrom, however, points out that the initial objective of the Japanese end run was an attack on the Australian air bases. Bates, Battle of the Coral Sea; Lundstrom, Black Shoe Carrier Admiral, 137–40. See also H. P. Willmott, The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies, February to June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 87.
The Battle of Midway (Pivotal Moments in American History) Page 44
