Intel reports

[War History]

Should the Japanese player get as good or nearly as good intel reports as the allied player?

"In contrast to the alliied side of the Pacific war the fact is widely unknown to historians that also Japan since the early 1930s was able to read the military and diplomatic ciphers of the United States as well as of Great Britain, though to a lesser degree than their enemies, and exchanged cryptographic information with the Axis partners, including captured code books."

http://www.intelligence-history.org/jih/Krebs-1-2.html

Can't find it on-line but:
Ardman, Harvey. "U.S. Code-breakers vs. Japanese Code-breakers in World War II." American Legion Magazine, May 1972, 18-23, 38-42.

The author covers Magic and Enigma on the Allied side and the activities of the Tokumu Han on the Japanese side. The article was published before the main revelations about Ultra. A reproduction of the Chicago Tribune's infamous dispatch on the Battle of Midway appears on p. 21.

From the LA Times:
Reitman, Valerie. "Japan Broke U.S. Code Before Pearl Harbor, Researcher Finds." Los Angeles Times

"While digging through the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md., last summer," Toshihiro Minohara, a "young Japanese American professor [at Kobe University,] stumbled upon a document, declassified by the CIA about five years ago, that proved that Tokyo had succeeded in breaking the U.S. and British diplomatic codes. A few microfilmed documents, showing the Japanese translations of the telegrams, were attached.... Further research by a colleague in Japan confirmed the findings -- and may shed light on the mind-set that caused Japan's last holdouts for peace to opt for war just weeks before the attack, Minohara said this week."

I have found dozens of other sources as well.

Edit: Lots of interesting off topic things on this site:
http://www.intelligence-history.org/jih/previous.html

[jomni]

Cool website by the way.
 
I didn't read the articles, but it's not just about breaking the codes but also intelligence gathering capabilities / technology.

[PaxMondo]

I think the difference is that while IJ had the intel, they did not use it as effectively as the allies and in particular the USN.  We can conjecture as to why until the cows come home, but the historical fact is already in place. 
 
In game, I think the allied/IJ intel difference is a bit too large at present.  A good allied player making full use of the available intel is very tough to trick while the IJ has almost no idea other than what his recon tells him directly.  I think the difference should be less at the beginning of the war and grow to the current capability by '45. 
 
Just my thoughts.

[DeriKuk]

Back to the game: How good are the intel reports that the Allied player receives?

My experience, up to October 1942, is "not much", a.k.a. "practically useless", "sometimes misleading" and "generally dated".

Another explanation is that I'm simply too thick to connect the dots. [:(]

[Cap Mandrake]

The riposte to this claim is the historical record:

If the Japanese deciphered US dipliomatic cables then they seriously misjudged US will.

Additionally, intercepting US diplomatic cables from Japan were is very short supply after the war started. [:)]

[topeverest]

Hjal,

As allied player you will get very juicy intel bits on a regular basis.  Its on the player to capitalize on them. 

[rtrapasso]

The US diplomatic codes were a farce prior to Pearl Harbor, and to some extent even afterwards... the US knew it, and often would send sensitive material in diplomatic pouches, or even in some cases asking the Brits to transmit sensitive information in BRITISH codes... [X(] [8|]

This came to a pretty abrupt end with the outbreak of war and the proliferation of US coding machines.

During the war, Japanese successes against US (and apparently other Allied codes) was essentially zero... they had partially solved a low level cipher used between combat aircraft at one point, but that was of little use and they lost that when there was a change in code (rather frequent, esp. compared to the Japanese frequency in changing codes).

Other than this, Japanese successes against Allied codes was practically zip. They got information by traffic analysis, radio intercepts of sometimes uncoded messages (it can be astonishing how far a radio signal can bounce sometimes), and seizing documents, though, as well as prisoner interrogations.

Where the US and Brits had tens of thousands of people working on codes and intel(and of the entire conglomeration of folk, probably in the 100,000 range), the Japanese had a few folk (dozens?) usually assigned to military intel work (as opposed to internal secret police intel work). For instance, for the entire Philippines Theater operations they had one guy assigned to work afternoons on intel. He said he had a box of the Japanese equivalent 3x5 cards he kept in the closet as his resources.

Apparently, intel work (like other things) was not high on the list of things Bushido.

[SuluSea]

Should the Japanese player get as good or nearly as good intel reports as the allied player?

 
No

[mike scholl 1]

"While digging through the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md., last summer," Toshihiro Minohara, a "young Japanese American professor [at Kobe University,] stumbled upon a document, declassified by the CIA about five years ago, that proved that Tokyo had succeeded in breaking the U.S. and British diplomatic codes. A few microfilmed documents, showing the Japanese translations of the telegrams, were attached...

Unfortunately for them, the war wasn't run by diplomats.  So once it started, reading the Diplomatic Code wasn't of much use in combat.  Though I'm sure it was depressing for the Japs to read just how much Lend Lease material was being sent to Britain and Russia.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: hjalmar99

Back to the game: How good are the intel reports that the Allied player receives?

My experience, up to October 1942, is "not much", a.k.a. "practically useless", "sometimes misleading" and "generally dated".

Another explanation is that I'm simply too thick to connect the dots. [:(]

Nuff said.

[VSWG]

In WitP, Bodhi's utility made the (Allied) intel reports much more useful. 2 examples:

- when you had diligently loaded dozens of turns into the utility, you could click on an enemy base hex in the tool, and it would list you all reports about this hex from the turns you loaded. Sometimes, when a sub or an intel report itself reported that for instance 5 enemy units were present at a base, the utility would identify all 5 units! [8D] Of course some of the reports could have been outdated by now, but still, you'd get a very good picture about enemy forces at a base away from the front.

- remember all the "radio transmission in hex X,Y" reports, where X,Y was somewhere in the middle of the ocean? Not really interesting, right? Wrong. Once, when scrolling around the map in Bodhi's tool, I noted about 10 markers for such intel messages IN A STRAIGHT LINE from Truk to Noumea. [X(] I clicked on them, and the one closest to Truk was 10 days old. The next one, 6 hexes closer to Noumea: 9 days, the next one (again 6 hexes): 8 days, and so on... It was a large Japanese invasion TF bound for Noumea, which (probably because of its size) generated a "radio transmission" EVERY TURN. With the help of Bodhi's utility, I was able to identify its target, and precisely predict D-Day. I would have never "connected all the dots" - literally, in this case -  without the tool. Sadly, it was too early in the game to intervene...

[Wikingus]

ORIGINAL: VSWG

In WitP, Bodhi's utility made the (Allied) intel reports much more useful. 2 examples:

- when you had diligently loaded dozens of turns into the utility, you could click on an enemy base hex in the tool, and it would list you all reports about this hex from the turns you loaded. Sometimes, when a sub or an intel report itself reported that for instance 5 enemy units were present at a base, the utility would identify all 5 units! [8D] Of course some of the reports could have been outdated by now, but still, you'd get a very good picture about enemy forces at a base away from the front.

- remember all the "radio transmission in hex X,Y" reports, where X,Y was somewhere in the middle of the ocean? Not really interesting, right? Wrong. Once, when scrolling around the map in Bodhi's tool, I noted about 10 markers for such intel messages IN A STRAIGHT LINE from Truk to Noumea. [X(] I clicked on them, and the one closest to Truk was 10 days old. The next one, 6 hexes closer to Noumea: 9 days, the next one (again 6 hexes): 8 days, and so on... It was a large Japanese invasion TF bound for Noumea, which (probably because of its size) generated a "radio transmission" EVERY TURN. With the help of Bodhi's utility, I was able to identify its target, and precisely predict D-Day. I would have never "connected all the dots" - literally, in this case -  without the tool. Sadly, it was too early in the game to intervene...

That's amazing... no way do I normally bother too much with Intel as such, since you can't redirect directly to mentioned hexes, and that's a huge downside.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: hjalmar99

Back to the game: How good are the intel reports that the Allied player receives?

My experience, up to October 1942, is "not much", a.k.a. "practically useless", "sometimes misleading" and "generally dated".

Another explanation is that I'm simply too thick to connect the dots. [:(]

Nuff said.

This one should strike fear into all JFBs. Yep, I get one of these 'purt near every other day . . .

[Bullwinkle58]

Tracker has something similar in the Intel tab. You can get all intel for a base, ship, LCU that has been reported since the beginning of the db. I use it all the time pre-invasion to see which LCUs might be there.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: hjalmar99

Back to the game: How good are the intel reports that the Allied player receives?

My experience, up to October 1942, is "not much", a.k.a. "practically useless", "sometimes misleading" and "generally dated".

Another explanation is that I'm simply too thick to connect the dots. [:(]

Nuff said.

This one should strike fear into all JFBs. Yep, I get one of these 'purt near every other day . . .

I have never seen an item that good.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I have never seen an item that good.

That's because you didn't sacrifice a bucket of chicken to the random number gods.

[VSWG]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Tracker has something similar in the Intel tab. You can get all intel for a base, ship, LCU that has been reported since the beginning of the db. I use it all the time pre-invasion to see which LCUs might be there.

Can't load tracker with the map, the DB is too large. [:(] Even without map, it takes 10 minutes to load now. I guess I have to restart with a clean DB.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

"While digging through the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md., last summer," Toshihiro Minohara, a "young Japanese American professor [at Kobe University,] stumbled upon a document, declassified by the CIA about five years ago, that proved that Tokyo had succeeded in breaking the U.S. and British diplomatic codes. A few microfilmed documents, showing the Japanese translations of the telegrams, were attached...

Unfortunately for them, the war wasn't run by diplomats.  So once it started, reading the Diplomatic Code wasn't of much use in combat.  Though I'm sure it was depressing for the Japs to read just how much Lend Lease material was being sent to Britain and Russia.

The old diplomatic codes were scrapped, although not immediately... in some cases info was sent by certain diplomats in the compromised code when they WANTED to make sure the other side knew something... at least one Italian diplomat did this as well when he found out his code was broken.

[War History]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

The US diplomatic codes were a farce prior to Pearl Harbor, and to some extent even afterwards... the US knew it, and often would send sensitive material in diplomatic pouches, or even in some cases asking the Brits to transmit sensitive information in BRITISH codes... [X(] [8|]

This came to a pretty abrupt end with the outbreak of war and the proliferation of US coding machines.

During the war, Japanese successes against US (and apparently other Allied codes) was essentially zero... they had partially solved a low level cipher used between combat aircraft at one point, but that was of little use and they lost that when there was a change in code (rather frequent, esp. compared to the Japanese frequency in changing codes).

Other than this, Japanese successes against Allied codes was practically zip. They got information by traffic analysis, radio intercepts of sometimes uncoded messages (it can be astonishing how far a radio signal can bounce sometimes), and seizing documents, though, as well as prisoner interrogations.

Where the US and Brits had tens of thousands of people working on codes and intel(and of the entire conglomeration of folk, probably in the 100,000 range), the Japanese had a few folk (dozens?) usually assigned to military intel work (as opposed to internal secret police intel work). For instance, for the entire Philippines Theater operations they had one guy assigned to work afternoons on intel. He said he had a box of the Japanese equivalent 3x5 cards he kept in the closet as his resources.

Apparently, intel work (like other things) was not high on the list of things Bushido.

2 Tokyo Rose reports that I am personally aware of:

1) The guys on their way to the Kiska invasion had no idea where they were headed when they boarded ship. Tokyo Rose interrupted the sweet warblings of the Andrews Sisters on shortwave radio. "All you boys headed for Kiska Island," she warned, "are in for a big surprise." She then listed their unit names, location and numbers, as well as the size of their assembling fleet at Adak, and informed the men of the exact time and date of their secret invasion.

2) The day the 96th division was supposed to land on Yap (their orders were changed and they were instead sent to Leyte a few days before their scheduled Yap landing) Tokyo Rose reported the division wiped out on the beaches. My father was in the division and heard the broadcast.

So to just write off the Japanese intell ability so lightly is rather irresponsible. Not to mention that I am sure that Japanese intell services didn't give every piece of info they had to the propaganda radio ministry. This is a small snapshot of their actual abilities. Tokyo Rose (Iva Ikuko Toguri D'Aquino) was convicted in part for announcing ship movements.

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

"While digging through the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md., last summer," Toshihiro Minohara, a "young Japanese American professor [at Kobe University,] stumbled upon a document, declassified by the CIA about five years ago, that proved that Tokyo had succeeded in breaking the U.S. and British diplomatic codes. A few microfilmed documents, showing the Japanese translations of the telegrams, were attached...

Unfortunately for them, the war wasn't run by diplomats. So once it started, reading the Diplomatic Code wasn't of much use in combat. Though I'm sure it was depressing for the Japs to read just how much Lend Lease material was being sent to Britain and Russia.

Nice of you to focus on 1 part and totally ignore the first paragraph. Guess its easier to make your point by ignoring other facts that stand in the way of that point.

"In contrast to the alliied side of the Pacific war the fact is widely unknown to historians that also Japan since the early 1930s was able to read the military and diplomatic ciphers of the United States as well as of Great Britain, though to a lesser degree than their enemies, and exchanged cryptographic information with the Axis partners, including captured code books."

[rtrapasso]

2 Tokyo Rose reports that I am personally aware of:

1) The guys on their way to the Kiska invasion had no idea where they were headed when they boarded ship. Tokyo Rose interrupted the sweet warblings of the Andrews Sisters on shortwave radio. "All you boys headed for Kiska Island," she warned, "are in for a big surprise." She then listed their unit names, location and numbers, as well as the size of their assembling fleet at Adak, and informed the men of the exact time and date of their secret invasion.

2) The day the 96th division was supposed to land on Yap (their orders were changed and they were instead sent to Leyte a few days before their scheduled Yap landing) Tokyo Rose reported the division wiped out on the beaches. My father was in the division and heard the broadcast.

So to just write off the Japanese intell ability so lightly is rather irresponsible.

No - as i said above, their CODEBREAKING was dreadful, but they had other sources of information as i mentioned. Intel was not a high priority in GENERAL.

The incident in Kiska could easily be explained by a couple of recon flights (this would reveal the size, speed and arrival times of a large invasion fleet which would be easy enough to spot).

The Yap incident reflects the poor intel of the Japanese (reporting a division wiped out that hadn't even landed.)

It is QUITE possible (indeed, even likely) that you can derive the entire OOB from just traffic analysis. This was done by both sides (and not reflected in the game).

And, of course, anyone unfortunate enough to fall into Japanese hands (i.e., fliers, shipwreck survivors, POWs from whatever source) were going to give up information.

Picking up uncoded low-powered radio transmissions is an artform (amateur radio operators that are QRP buffs will know about this.)

Lastly, there are spies... not necessarily in the US, but also in foreign neutral countries. For instance, it was a neutral nation (USSR) that supplied a lot of information about what was going on in Japan (well, until August 1945). Places like Lisbon were hot-spots for espionage, and embassies were favorite targets.

EDIT: The penetration of the US diplomatic codes is not real news, since David Kahn wrote about it in The Codebreakers in the 1960s.