Customer Reviews

Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of: American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The detail in examining all aspects of intelligence in the Japanese and American navies during WWII -- from fleet recognition, to traffic analysis, to wartime production information, to the role of Ultra and decryption -- make Prados' book an excellent study. Those familiar with WWII issues will find lots of fresh material.

Prados is wise enough to limit the topic to just naval intelligence issues, but still fills 735 pages with detail and skill. The pleasant surprise is that it's so well-written, building each issue to its climax in the wartime theater. And, with 50+ years of perspective, you can feel the tide of the war shift after Guadalcanal.

The art of intelligence-gathering increased dramatically during this war because of radio intercepts, so Prados covers the topic chronologically. He has an excellent analysis of Japanese Naval strategy at Pearl Harbor, during the Pacific conquest period, and the shift to a "defensive" strategy of the homelands.

Prados does an excellent job comparing the structure of Japanese and American intelligence-gathering; also in indicating both opportunities and limitations of intelligence in war-time. The reader also sees the dramatic impact that war-time propaganda has in mis-leading military leaders.

Surprisingly low-tech intelligence issues are important at various points during the war: such as the absence of photo-reconnaissance early in the war for Americans. For the Japanese navy, poor ship-recognition skills by Japanese pilots and skippers leads to assumptions that American carriers present no threat because they've been reported as sunk -- or that destroyers were cruisers or even battleships.

The book is closed by an excellent post-war period which does two things: follows the careers of major intelligence participants and discusses social aspects of military training.

Combined Fleet Decoded taught me more new material regarding the Japanese navy and the U.S. Intelligence surveying that Japanese navy than I had learned in the past 15 years of reading Second World War books and watching documentary-type DVDs such as the History Channel. That is not a crack at other books, DVDs and the History Channel. Instead, it is support for the depth which Prados examines the conflict - from its genesis twenty years before Pearl Harbor right up through the hostilities.

The conflict is examined in detail. For example, Prados notes that Pearl Harbor strategist Genda's inspiration for a massed carrier attack on Pearl Harbor came from watching an American newsreel in Tokyo. Quantitative support is offered throughout. He writes that Japanese Captain Tomioka's estimate based on experience in China was that a 3-to-1 ratio was necessary to ensure success against the American aircraft in the Philippines in 1941.

Of course, Prados' great advantage is time. Written in 1995 (I believe), he was able to research the combined memoirs of people like Edwin Layton and Japser Holmes a decade after each had written their memoirs and after they had passed away. After comparing notes, he makes some of the most perceptive analysis of the Pacific War. For example he provides the detail to support the notion that Macarthur had as much reason to be dismissed after the disastrous events of December 7, 1941 as Husband Kimmel. Yet Kimmel was relieved and Macarthur remained. Additionally, the Japanese trained for the "Decisive Naval Battle" instead of preparing for a prolonged naval engagement and were never really to turn the tide of battle. And for that, we are thankful.

Other reviewers have commented on the breadth of information and the contribution this book makes to our understanding of intelligence in the Pacific war. I also want to note the wonderful way it is written. Personalities, on both sides of the conflict, are fleshed out. Battles, as large as Leyte Gulf and as small as individual submarines attacks, are vividly described. The reader is made to feel the emotions of the participants. Buy the book for the information, read the book for the sheer enjoyment of it.

This book starts off describing both sides' codebreaking efforts prior to WWII, something not available elsewhere, certainly not in such stunning detail.

With the onset of the Pacific War, though, there's a new thread to follow: naval operations (hence my review's title). John Prados certainly excels at describing naval operations in the light of knowledge gained through intelligence, all the while throwing in an amazing amount of detail, but there are other books describing operations (although minus the recent codebreaking informations), and better ones at that.

Sadly, by switching to operational history, Prados almost forgets about the war behind the scenes, the sleepless nights in crowded rooms, during which some "super-brains" solved incomplete puzzles, which were to prove vital in the war effort, without earning themselves the honors they deserved. Only this reason keeps me from awarding 5 stars - there are 4 for being one of the most detailed and fascinating to read operational histories of the Pacific War.

This is a SUPERB work on the development and uses (as well as MIS-uses) of intelligence gathering in the Pacific war in World War II. It is both in depth enough for a scholar of the era, while also being completely accessible to the relative layperson. Prados shows HOW intelligence was gathered, how the process developed, and the ways it can be (or should have been )utilized, naming names and giving praise and fault were due. It definitely belongs on ANY serious naval historians shelf

(Reviewed by Patrick L. Moore in American Bar Association National Security Law Report Fall-Winter 1998.) It is surprisingly difficult to write a review of a classic. Without putting too fine a gloss on it, Combined Fleet Decoded (`CFD") should be considered as to intelligence work what Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War is to national naval strategy, quite simply, the epitome of its kind. In it, John Prados shows how modern strategic intelligence practice and theory came of age in World War II and did so primarily in the Pacific. In terms of scope and depth of analysis, along with sheer drama and gutlevel operational practicality, it belongs on the shelf between Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game and Adda Bozeman's Strategic Intelligence and Statecraft.

CFD tells the story of the most crucial military rivalry in the history of the world, that between U.S. Navy Intelligence and the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War. While conventional conceptions of the history of World War II seem to see only a European campaign rounded at the beginning by the invasion of Poland and at the end by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (with a couple of John Wayne movies in between), in actuality it was the Pacific War which was by far and away `Amer- `ica's" war. Europe was obviously the heavyweight bout, but the war in the Pacific was our own particular war. The Pacific War, in American strategic culture is our "Odyssey" while Europe was our `Iliad." The war in Europe was Elliot Ness versus the Mafia while the Pacific was a fight between the Texans and the Comanches and culturally much more up close and personal. Japan had been planning for yogeki zengen sakusen (an offensive/defense strategy of interceptive operations) leading to a `Decisive Battle" since 1907 and America had been anticipating the struggle since 1906 with its War Plan Orange.

In any event, it cannot be denied that, absent the heroic stand at Bataan. and then the victories at Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal, the D-Day landings would have been drastically delayed and the European air offensive might never have gotten off the ground. What is insufficiently appreciated is that what made the early American shoestring counter-offensive against Japan and the- eventual turnaround of the war in the South Pacific possible was the vastly superior intelligence methods and organization brought to bear with typical American zeal, teamwork, ingenuity and know-how by the U.S. Navy. It was an effort which the pseudomodern military culture of Japan at the time could not even conceive of. For example, Japan never produced ship recognition models or aircraft identification flashcards-simple but indispensable training aids without which no naval air force could expect to fight a consistently proficient war. Also, it wasn't until April of 1945 that the Japanese Combined Fleet began to share intelligence materials with the Imperial Japanese Army (while the U.S. Navy and Army worked hand in hand, even if they didn't like it, from the inception of the war). Without those crucial, early lynchpin victories in the Pacific, America would doubtless have focused ever greater attention on the conflict with Japan at the expense of the Allied strategy of "Germany First." What gave the edge to those U.S. operations in 1942 and 2943 which turned the tide in the Pacific, relieved the pressure somewhat, and allowed the operational primacy of Europe to prevail was the American intelligence masterpiece of cracking the Japanese diplomatic codes "Red" through "Purple" (named for their colored binders in the codebreakers office), intercept translations of which were called "MAGIC," and the breaking (and re-breaking in each later version1 of JN-25-the Imperial Japanese Navy's very own operational cipher. Moreover, while British intelligence had benefit of Polish and French work on solving the Enigma cipher in Europe, and were working in a culturally similar language with German, the American codebreakers in the Pacific worked alone on the Japanese codes and in a language remote from our linguistic heritage. Ultimately, the American analysts tapped the resources of the Underwood company to manufacture the super secret "RIP-5," a Japanese-language typewriter which allowed U.S. Navy code clerks to take down Japanese signals traffic faster than the IJN's radiomen themselves. Similarly, the Navy's retro-engineered version of the Japanese "B" type cipher machine (comparable to the German Enigma) was totally home-built, was wrapped up and sealed at the end of the war and is still highly classified. (When the PBS Nova series shot the January 18. 1994 episode on "The Code Breakers," they were refused permission to enter the warehouse where the B-machine was stored to film it themselves but rather were provided govemment footage of the machine being unwrapped and displayed for them.

The clue to the success of U.S. naval intelligence and the failure of the IJN, is to be found in the . essential differences between American and Japanese strategic cultures. For example, as John Prados relates, in 1940 Commander Zanematsu Yuzuru (who eventually became chief of the "U.S." office of the joho hyohu, i.e. Japanese naval intelligence), was a naval attache assigned to America. While crossing the United States by automobile, he saw a i three-man crew in the Rocky Mountains making j road repairs at an isolated spot with a power shovel 1 and dump truck. He knew that in Japan the job i would take at least 80 men. He later recalled, "I felt in my guts that it would be real trouble if Japan had to fight with such a country." By comparison, in Richard B. Frank's, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle, the author notes that Japan lost that crucial encounter not because of too few fighter planes but for lack of bulldoi?ers. Japanese after-action analysis of the battle for the Solomons estimated that had Japan possessed even 20% of the American airfield-construction capability, they could have won the campaign.

Between these benchmarks can be found the essential character of U.S. and Japanese intelligence methods and effectiveness in the Pacific War which Prados chronicles in amazing detail. American naval intelligence triumphed and ultimately shortened the war by at least a year or more (and went far to give the Allies the victory in Europe as well by allowing a crucial economy of force for the concentration on defeating Hitler first) because of the character of the war effort supported by typically American social influences on its military institutions. Japanese naval intelligence failed in large measure because of the strategic culture within which it worked and that failure made the critical difference between success in its limited war aim of a favorable negotiated peace and the total and absolute defeat (the first in the history of that nation which it suffered instead.

One of my professors utilized this as a textbook, and I found it to be invaluable due to it's comprehensive and exhaustive referencing, the authors firm understanding of the subject, and its overall quality. I continue to refer to it from time to time, and enjoy reading some of the more detailed stories - well written, easily read.

This work should become the basic textbook on Intelligence training, organization, gathering and analysis. As Thucydides' "The Peloponnesian War" was the classic textbook of dual-power hegemonic rivalry at the U.S. Naval War College, "CBD" provides the organizing work describing the rise and conceptual structure of modern Intelligence. World War II, especially in the Pacific, was the origin of the modern strategic analysis from universal input which turned "spying" into Intelligence.

First class survey intelligence operations by both the US and Japanese forces in WWII. Details who knew what and when. The author illumitates how good intelligence can swing the victory to the side with better information when forces are roughly equal. He. describes the development of intelligence methods by the United States during WWII that swung the balance in favor of the US from late 1942 onwards. If you have read Morrison, this book will fill in blanks, as his narative did not go into the then classified details of 'Magic' and other elint.

Written long enough after the War to assure hindsight with clarity, declassification of war secrets and the participation of the Japanese, Combined Fleet Decoded is the most complete and descriptive book on the War in the Pacific ever written.

John Prados demonstrates great scholarship and the tenacity of a word-class researcher as he uncovers never before revealed secrets of cryptography and the impact of intelligence gathering on the pivotal naval battles of the Pacific. Long before America's edge in production could be brought to bear, the gathering, analysis and interpretation of the enemy's intentions provided the Americans with just enough of an advantage to fight the Japanese to a standstill early in the War. It was in this crucial period that the code breakers excelled and provided just enough of an edge to make a difference.

While only the most avid World War II history buff would consider this a "page-turner", it is written well enough to maintain interest and moves along at a decent pace. Considering the interesting revelations and new insights into old battles, it is certainly worth reading.

John E. Nevola
Author of The Last Jump - A Novel of World War II