Question: Analyse a defining moment in intelligence history from 1901 to now?

The Battle of Midway (1942)

Battle of Midway WWII – Specifics

Date: June 4 -7 1942

Place: On and around Midway Atoll 28°12′N 177°21′W

Event: American ambush of Japanese carrier forces

Result: American Victory

Commanders:

American	Japanese
Chester W. Nimitz Frank Jack Fletcher Raymond A. Spruance	Isoroku Yamamoto Nobutake Kondō Chūichi Nagumo Tamon Yamaguchi Ryusaku Yanagimoto

American	Japanese
3 carriers 7 heavy cruisers 1 light cruiser 15 destroyers 233 carrier-based aircraft 127 land-based aircraft 16 submarines	4 carriers 2 battleships 2 heavy cruisers 1 light cruiser 12 destroyers 248 carrier-based aircraft 16 floatplanes

Losses:

American	Japanese
1 carrier sunk 1 destroyer sunk Approx. 150 aircraft destroyed 307 killed 3 captured	4 carriers sunk 1 cruiser sunk 248 aircraft destroyed 3,057 killed 37 captured

In June 1942 the Battle of Midway marked an important turning point in World War Two. During the battle aircraft for the American carriers Yorktown, Hornet and Enterprise ambushed and destroyed a significant portion of the Japanese Navy’s carrier force. The battle is considered a significant example of how intelligence can be applied to any level of warfare.

The main reason given for the American victory is most often the breaking of the Japanese codes by U.S. navy intelligence. However further study of the battle shows this to be a simplistic view that ignores several further levels of intelligence successes and failures that contributed to the outcome. The fact that the code breakers we able to do their jobs so well is really just the tip of a fairly complicated iceberg that included deception, surveillance, reconnaissance and development of effective intelligence processes. The battle of midway is a story of intelligence being used to achieve surprise. It is further interesting because it is one of the few instances where the intended victims (American forces) were able to avoid and then actually inflict surprise on their attackers (Markam, 1993, p. 5).

In analysing this event we can observe the effects of several intelligence fields on the outcome, these include cryptography / signals intelligence (SIGINT), deception, and dissemination I will go into more detail on each of these below.

 Deception:

Deception was used or attempted by both sides on the Midway battle. Firstly Midway was not actually the objective, the objective was to lure the remaining American carriers into a pitched battle where they could be overwhelmed by the Japanese fleet. The capture of Midway was supposed to be the bait. The Japanese also sent a force to attack the Aleutian Islands as a feint. (Markam, 1993, pp. 16-17)

Nimitz was also using deception, he made sure that the carer Enterprise was seen by the Japanese near the East Solomons before it returned to Pearl Harbor. He also made use of smaller ships broadcasting on aircraft carrier frequencies to make it look like some of the carriers we in the Coral Sea (Markam, 1993, pp. 16-18)  it was due to these efforts that let the Japanese to the conclusion that they had achieved surprise and that any type of attack on their forces was unlikely. (Tully & Lu, 2015, p. 87)

The most famous use of deception at Midway involves tricking the Japanese into confirming Midway as the target. In May not everyone was convinced that Midway was a target. Codebreakers could only indicate that a major operation was in the works against some place the Japanese only referred to as “AF”.  In order to confirm a message was sent via an undersea cable (un-tappable by the Japanese) instructing Midway to report that they were having problems with their desalination plant, and were running short on water, the message was to be sent in the clear which virtually guaranteed that it would be intercepted. A few days later a message was decrypted reporting that “AF” was running low on water confirming midway as “AF” and the target. (McDermott & Bar-Joseph, 2016, p. 960)

Cryptography and SIGINT:

The heart of the Battle of midway story is of course the breaking of the Japanese Navy’s JN-25 code by SIGINT analysts at Station Hypo. By March 1942 they were reporting daily on hundreds of navel intercepts. Due to the fact that some Japanese commander used outdated codebooks the American listeners were able to capture transmissions using both old and new codes allowing for faster cracking of new cyphers. The Japanese did eventually change their codes however by that time the Americans had practically all of Yamamoto’s battle plans, strategy and transit dates and were in a position to lay a trap of their own. (Elder, n.d.)

The Japanese seem to have been somewhat cavalier in their implementations of cyphers. Often leaving them in place longer then they should. They were of the opinion that even if the cypher were broken the complexities of the Japanese language would make translating impossible. This of course is nonsense as the Navy had started hiring fluent Japanese speakers and experts in Japanese culture to assist in their codebreaking. (Tucker, 2015, p. 84)

Dissemination and Acceptance

The importance of dissemination and the acceptance by the consumer of intelligence product cannot be underestimated. Markam tells us that in evaluating intelligence success or failure we need to keep in mind whether it was the “intelligence system” that failed or did the consumer fail to make use of the resulting product (Markam, 1993, p. 10)

After the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 the war in the Pacific had been going badly for America. The turnaround at Midway was achieved by Joe Rochefort dramatically improving the quality of intelligence product and then being able to convince Admiral Chester Nimitz that the intelligence analysis his team was producing was trustworthy.

 Joe Rochefort was put in charge of Station Hypo, the naval cryptography division at Pearl Harbor as part of a post Peral Harbor overhaul of Navy’s Intelligence services. Rochefort was an expert on Japan as well as an experienced cryptanalyst. It was Rochfordts teams work during the battle of the Coral Sea that gave Nimitz the confidence to trust Rochefort over the often conflicting assessments he would often get from the Washington based intelligence services. (Dahl, 2013, p. 83).

The Japanese had issues with their dissemination, given that they were operating under radio silence there were several missed opportunities for them to be warned that they had lost the element of surprise. Tully and Yu show us that the Japanese went into battle with an extremely limited picture of what the Americans were doing and though they made reasonable decisions based on the intelligence they possessed this could not save them from the reality in which they found themselves. (Tully & Lu, 2015, p. 95)

Impact:

The victory at Midway was confirmation that the reforms introduced after Pearl Harbor were effective. Just six months earlier the U.S had suffered a crushing defeat due largely to failures in its intelligence systems. By re-establishing the intelligence units with experts not only in cryptography but also language and culture they were able to vastly improve their intelligence product. This basic model is still in use today. The battle of Midway demonstrated any early example of what is now called “battlespace awareness”  and it was by improving on this that enabled the U.S to claim victory later during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. (Donovan & Mack, 2014).

References

Alcala, R. W., 1995. Effective Operational Deception: Learning the Lessons of Midway and Desert Storm.. Newport: Naval War College.

Anon., n.d. Totally History. [Online]
Available at: http://totallyhistory.com/battle-of-midway/
[Accessed 29 03 2017].

Barde, R. E., 1983. Midway: Tarnished Victory. Military Affairs: The Journal of Military History, Including Theory and Technology, 47(4), pp. 188-192.

Dahl, E. J., 2013. Why Won’t They Listen? Comparing Receptivity Toward Intelligence At Pearl Harbor and Midway. Intelligence and National Security, 28(1), pp. 68-90.

Donovan, P. & Mack, J., 2014. Code Breaking in the Pacific. London: Springer.

Elder, G., n.d. Intelligence in War: It Can Be Decisive. Studies in Intelligence, 50(2).

Markam, S. A., 1993. Intelligence And Surprise: The Battles Of Midway, Newport: Naval War College.

McDermott, R. & Bar-Joseph, U., 2016. Pearl Harbor And Midway: The Decisive Influence Of Two Men On The Outcomes. Intelligence and National Security, 31(7), pp. 949-962.

Tucker, S. C., 2015. Pearl Harbor: The Essential Reference Guide. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

Tully, A. & Lu, Y., 2015. A Question Of Estimates: How Faulty intelligence Drove Scouting At The Battle of Midway. Naval War College Review, 68(2), pp. 85-99.