“We never received this message….” After spending a career and then some in this kind of work….I’m not sure what “really” happened, but it couldn’t have been that easy. Every single message that comes and goes thru the “radio or communications” center is logged and, more importantly, end-to-end acknowledged. Every message has a unique message number at both the TX and RX stations. Especially for messages marked “Eyes Only”, TS and such. Now….the thought just occurred that this message could have been sent as an unofficial service message, but controls of who would have access to that message would be wide open. Indeed, service messages are not always encrypted…..so for this kind of a message from one commander to another….I can’t at all imagine they would risk sending it unencrypted. Which boils back down to the question….”what really happened”, despite books and records after the fact.
The Japanese were really too incompetent by sending out a message that "Target AF" was suffering from fresh water shortage. This would of been something to take note of, but not important enough to warrant sending a message back to Imperial Navy Command. Even if Midway was having issues with their fresh water supply, a base like Midway would have spares of water distillers to replace broken or malfunctioning ones.
Midway had sent out a supplementary msg saying they were in a critical water shortage, and requested a barge be dispatched to the island. Pearl responded by saying a barge was enroute. The Japanese also sent msgs saying that fresh water distillation equipment would hve to be brought with them.
I like how they continued the wedding analogy from Rocheford.
It's one of the best things the movie had done to explain signal intelligence to your average people for real
Indeed...this is indeed the scene I was looking for!
01:18 nimitz: u smart sunuvagun~~~~
Apparently, it was Wilfred Holmes that came up with this ruse
Still brilliant. Make the enemy confirm their plans without telling them you broke their codes
“We never received this message….” After spending a career and then some in this kind of work….I’m not sure what “really” happened, but it couldn’t have been that easy. Every single message that comes and goes thru the “radio or communications” center is logged and, more importantly, end-to-end acknowledged. Every message has a unique message number at both the TX and RX stations. Especially for messages marked “Eyes Only”, TS and such. Now….the thought just occurred that this message could have been sent as an unofficial service message, but controls of who would have access to that message would be wide open. Indeed, service messages are not always encrypted…..so for this kind of a message from one commander to another….I can’t at all imagine they would risk sending it unencrypted. Which boils back down to the question….”what really happened”, despite books and records after the fact.
the historical record is clear, they sent the dummy message out for certain
0:41
In real life Nimitz really did send a message like this.
@@studinthemakingi was referring to the moment where they confirm “af” is midway
I'm not a fan of Harrelson, but he did a cracking job in this role.
The Japanese were really too incompetent by sending out a message that "Target AF" was suffering from fresh water shortage. This would of been something to take note of, but not important enough to warrant sending a message back to Imperial Navy Command. Even if Midway was having issues with their fresh water supply, a base like Midway would have spares of water distillers to replace broken or malfunctioning ones.
Midway had sent out a supplementary msg saying they were in a critical water shortage, and requested a barge be dispatched to the island. Pearl responded by saying a barge was enroute. The Japanese also sent msgs saying that fresh water distillation equipment would hve to be brought with them.
Fog of war stuff no? They didn't realize their codes had been broken.
It was in regards to an important military target so I think they can get a pass in that regard.
Yeah Japanese was somewhat... lackluster seems like a polite word for it
Actually, the Japanese weren't aware that their codes had been broken. They were under the impression that their codes couldn't be broken.
0:53-1:20, this is happening here 247365, it transmit signal from me.