Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1) (The Pacific War Trilogy)

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1) (The Pacific War Trilogy) PDF Author: Ian W. Toll
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393083179
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 732

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Book Description
Winner of the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction "Both a serious work of history…and a marvelously readable dramatic narrative." —San Francisco Chronicle On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss, a blow that destroyed the offensive power of their fleet. Pacific Crucible—through a dramatic narrative relying predominantly on primary sources and eyewitness accounts of heroism and sacrifice from both navies—tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history to seize the strategic initiative.

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1) (The Pacific War Trilogy)

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (Vol. 1) (The Pacific War Trilogy) PDF Author: Ian W. Toll
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393083179
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 732

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Book Description
Winner of the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction "Both a serious work of history…and a marvelously readable dramatic narrative." —San Francisco Chronicle On the first Sunday in December 1941, an armada of Japanese warplanes appeared suddenly over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Six months later, in a sea fight north of the tiny atoll of Midway, four Japanese aircraft carriers were sent into the abyss, a blow that destroyed the offensive power of their fleet. Pacific Crucible—through a dramatic narrative relying predominantly on primary sources and eyewitness accounts of heroism and sacrifice from both navies—tells the epic tale of these first searing months of the Pacific war, when the U.S. Navy shook off the worst defeat in American military history to seize the strategic initiative.

U.S. Navy Codebreakers, Linguists, and Intelligence Officers against Japan, 1910-1941

U.S. Navy Codebreakers, Linguists, and Intelligence Officers against Japan, 1910-1941 PDF Author: Steven E. Maffeo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442255641
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
This unique reference presents 59 biographies of people who were key to the sea services being reasonably prepared to fight the Japanese Empire when the Second World War broke out, and whose advanced work proved crucial. These intelligence pioneers invented techniques, procedures, and equipment from scratch, not only allowing the United States to hold its own in the Pacific despite the loss of most of its Fleet at Pearl Harbor, but also laying the foundation of today’s intelligence methods and agencies. One-hundred years ago, in what was clearly an unsophisticated pre-information era, naval intelligence (and foreign intelligence in general) existed in rudimentary forms almost incomprehensible to us today. Founded in 1882, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)—the modern world’s “oldest continuously operating intelligence agency”—functioned for at least its first forty years with low manning, small budgets, low priority, and no prestige. The navy’s early steps into communications intelligence (COMINT), which included activities such as radio interception, radio traffic analysis, and cryptology, came with the 1916 establishment of the Code and Signals Section within the navy’s Division of Communications and with the 1924 creation of the “Research Desk” as part of the Section. Like ONI, this COMINT organization suffered from low budgets, manning, priority, and prestige. The dictionary focuses on these pioneers, many of whom went on, even after World War II, to important positions in the Navy, the State Department, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency. It reveals the work and innovations of well and lesser-known individuals who created the foundations of today’s intelligence apparatus and analysis.

Pacific Crucible

Pacific Crucible PDF Author: Ian W. Toll
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393068137
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 659

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Book Description
Draws on eyewitness accounts and primary sources to describe the first months of World War II in the Pacific, after the U.S. Navy suffered the worst defeat in its history at Pearl Harbor.

Joe Rochefort's War

Joe Rochefort's War PDF Author: Elliot W Carlson
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612510736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 626

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Book Description
Elliot Carlson’s award-winning biography of Capt. Joe Rochefort is the first to be written about the officer who headed Station Hypo, the U.S. Navy’s signals monitoring and cryptographic intelligence unit at Pearl Harbor, and who broke the Japanese navy’s code before the Battle of Midway. The book brings Rochefort to life as the irreverent, fiercely independent, and consequential officer that he was. Readers share his frustrations as he searches in vain for Yamamoto’s fleet prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but share his joy when he succeeds in tracking the fleet in early 1942 and breaks the code that leads Rochefort to believe Yamamoto’s invasion target is Midway. His conclusions, bitterly opposed by some top Navy brass, are credited with making the U.S. victory possible and helping to change the course of the war. The author tells the story of how opponents in Washington forced Rochefort’s removal from Station Hypo and denied him the Distinguished Service Medal recommended by Admiral Nimitz. In capturing the interplay of policy and personality and the role played by politics at the highest levels of the Navy, Carlson reveals a side of the intelligence community seldom seen by outsiders. For a full understanding of the man, Carlson examines Rochefort’s love-hate relationship with cryptanalysis, his adventure-filled years in the 1930s as the right-hand man to the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet, and his return to codebreaking in mid-1941 as the officer in charge of Station Hypo. He traces Rochefort’s career from his enlistment in 1918 to his posting in Washington as head of the Navy’s codebreaking desk at age twenty-five, and beyond. In many ways a reinterpretation of Rochefort, the book makes clear the key role his codebreaking played in the outcome of Midway and the legacy he left of reporting actionable intelligence directly to the fleet. An epilogue describes efforts waged by Rochefort’s colleagues to obtain the medal denied him in 1942—a drive that finally paid off in 1986 when the medal was awarded posthumously.

Codebreakers' Victory

Codebreakers' Victory PDF Author: Hervie Haufler
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497622565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
With exclusive interviews, a Signal Corps veteran tells the full story of how cryptography helped defeat the Axis powers, at Bletchley Park and beyond. For years, the story of the World War II codebreakers was kept a crucial state secret. Even Winston Churchill, himself a great advocate of Britain’s cryptologic program, purposefully minimized their achievements in his history books. Now, though, after decades have passed, the true scope of the British and American cryptographers’ role in the war has come to light. It was a role key to the Allied victory. From the Battle of Britain to the Pacific front to the panzer divisions in Africa, superior cryptography gave the Allies a decisive advantage over the Axis generals. Military intelligence made a significant difference in battle after battle. In Codebreakers’ Victory, veteran cryptographer Hervie Haufler takes readers behind the scenes in this fascinating underground world of ciphers and decoders. This broad view represents the first comprehensive account of codebreaking during World War II. Haufler pulls together years of research, exclusive access to top secret files, and personal interviews to craft a captivating must-read for anyone interested in the behind-the-front intellect and perseverance that went into beating the Nazis and Japan.

How I Discovered World War II's Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code

How I Discovered World War II's Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code PDF Author: David Kahn
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1466561998
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
Spies, secret messages, and military intelligence have fascinated readers for centuries but never more than today, when terrorists threaten America and society depends so heavily on communications. Much of what was known about communications intelligence came first from David Kahn's pathbreaking book, The Codebreakers. Kahn, considered the dean of intelligence historians, is also the author of Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II and Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943, among other books and articles. Kahn’s latest book, How I Discovered World War II's Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code, provides insights into the dark realm of intelligence and code that will fascinate cryptologists, intelligence personnel, and the millions interested in military history, espionage, and global affairs. It opens with Kahn telling how he discovered the identity of the man who sold key information about Germany’s Enigma machine during World War II that enabled Polish and then British codebreakers to read secret messages. Next Kahn addresses the question often asked about Pearl Harbor: since we were breaking Japan’s codes, did President Roosevelt know that Japan was going to attack and let it happen to bring a reluctant nation into the war? Kahn looks into why Nazi Germany’s totalitarian intelligence was so poor, offers a theory of intelligence, explicates what Clausewitz said about intelligence, tells—on the basis of an interview with a head of Soviet codebreaking—something about Soviet Comint in the Cold War, and reveals how the Allies suppressed the second greatest secret of WWII. Providing an inside look into the efforts to gather and exploit intelligence during the past century, this book presents powerful ideas that can help guide present and future intelligence efforts. Though stories of WWII spying and codebreaking may seem worlds apart from social media security, computer viruses, and Internet surveillance, this book offers timeless lessons that may help today’s leaders avoid making the same mistakes that have helped bring at least one global power to its knees. The book includes a Foreword written by Bruce Schneier.

Selections from Cryptologia

Selections from Cryptologia PDF Author: Cipher A. Deavours
Publisher: Artech House Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Here is the third collection of the very best, most compelling articles and professional papers from CRYPTOLOGIA, the definitive journal on the history and technology of cryptology. Compiled by five distinguished experts in the field, Selections from Cryptologia: History, People, and Technology offers personal accounts of crypto personalities, scholarly papers on the origins of cryptology, the inadequacy of cryptanalysis, and much more.

Ultra in the Pacific

Ultra in the Pacific PDF Author: John Winton
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Fortunately for the Americans in the Pacific, the Japanese sincerely believed that it was not possible for Westerners to learn their language. Lulled by this misapprehension into a false sense of security, they could only ascribe to luck or coincidence the remarkable frequency with which the Americans intercepted their plans.

Midway: Dauntless Victory

Midway: Dauntless Victory PDF Author: Peter C. Smith
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 184884705X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 857

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Book Description
This is an in-depth study of the battle of Midway that reviews the many previous accounts and compares their accuracy and veracity with fresh documentation that has been released recently, including new material on the post-war analysis made by a US select committee. There are new viewpoints on the muddle among the US Admirals; the total failure of the USAAF, despite elaborate claims; fresh thinking on the part played by the US Navy Dauntless dive-bombers in the action; the mystery of the carrier Saratoga's presence; Hollywood's totally wrong take on the battle in all the films since made about it. Also, included are new eyewitness accounts the author has obtained and information from Japanese sources that has never been previously published. The lengthy Appendices will include statistical details of the ships, the planes and the men.

Leadership Embodied, 2nd Edition

Leadership Embodied, 2nd Edition PDF Author: Joseph J Thomas
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612513336
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Leadership is a most demanding undertaking. How do some people make it seem so simple, so natural and instinctive? In the age-old debate as to whether leaders are born or made, Thomas contends that the answer is both. Great leaders throughout history were born with certain capabilities. Preparation honed those capabilities. Then that ability and preparation were combined with a will to lead. When circumstances demanded, the great leaders of history pulled these attributes together to create results that drove the course of history. While leaders are present in every aspect of human undertaking, we chose to illustrate each of the components of leadership through the most dramatic and demanding of all human undertakings—war and the preparations for war. Wartime leaders are leaders “writ with a darker pen.” Wartime challenges are, because of the life and death nature of the affair, more monumental and exacting. In the selection of individuals to illustrate each point, we chose wartime leaders as well as those who guided their subordinates and organizations in preparation for combat. Further we chose American leaders with a distinct and obvious bias towards the navy and Marine Corps. Multiple reasons led us to our approach for Leadership Embodied. First, a biography is perhaps the most effective method for imparting leadership lessons. Simple listings of prescriptive traits or descriptive qualities are patronizing and, frequently, boring. Second, our biographical examples are familiar to most—or at least they should be. Finally, all of these historical selections have dramatically shaped today’s institutions, practices, and customs within the naval services. These are not marginal figures with marginal influence. The individuals included, and their respective leadership attributes, should be required reading for any student of leadership. Each has a particular lesson for midshipmen on their journey to becoming a navy or Marine Corps officer. This book does not promise to be a panacea. There is no short cut. Leadership does not follow a prescribed path. We study examples to inspire us to become better, to be strong when it is easy to give in, and to know others have gone before us and faced insurmountable odds. Leadership, as an ill-defined social science, crosses boundaries with several disciplines including sociology, psychology, philosophy, and history. We have selected a method that combines the psychological “profile” of effective leaders and the historical context of the impact their leadership brought to organizations and events. Our hope for this book is that these case studies illustrate the basic elements—in themselves the very essence—of leadership. It is through inherent talent, arduous preparation, and practical experience that we become capable leaders. The reader brings the first to the table; then we offer a small token in the second pursuit; and circumstances enable the third.