Magic And Ultra In The China-Burma-India Theater
()
About this ebook
Col. Stephen K. Fitzgerald
See Book Description
Related to Magic And Ultra In The China-Burma-India Theater
Related ebooks
More To The Story: A Reappraisal Of US Intelligence Prior To The Pacific War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma & Britain: 1941–45 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Action in the East Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerica at War since 1945: Politics and Diplomacy in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCultural Imprints: War and Memory in the Samurai Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBritain’s Korean War: Cold War diplomacy, strategy and security 1950–53 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLogics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States, and Military Occupations Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwilight of the Titans: Great Power Decline and Retrenchment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJapan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Postwar Japan as History Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Counterinsurgency In Eastern Afghanistan 2004-2008: A Civilian Perspective Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlanning for Empire: Reform Bureaucrats and the Japanese Wartime State Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Eden-Eisenhower Correspondence, 1955-1957 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKilling the Rising Sun | Summary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConstructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931-1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJapan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReliability and Alliance Interdependence: The United States and Its Allies in Asia, 1949–1969 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWrestling The Initiative: Ridgway As Operational Commander In The Korean War, December 1950 To April 1951 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClash of the Capital Ships: From the Yorkshire Raid to Jutland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Disarmament to Rearmament: The Reversal of US Policy toward West Germany, 1946–1955 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Making of the Modern Chinese Navy: Special Historical Characteristics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaiwan's Former Nuclear Weapons Program: Nuclear Weapons On-Demand Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGunboat Justice Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRestraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Wolfram Wars: Exposing The Secret Battle in Portugal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Wars & Military For You
The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doctors From Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Daily Creativity Journal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mein Kampf: The Original, Accurate, and Complete English Translation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World's Greatest Secret Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unit 731: Testimony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wager Disaster: Mayem, Mutiny and Murder in the South Seas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Making of the Atomic Bomb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Washington: The Indispensable Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art of War: The Definitive Interpretation of Sun Tzu's Classic Book of Strategy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Magic And Ultra In The China-Burma-India Theater
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Magic And Ultra In The China-Burma-India Theater - Col. Stephen K. Fitzgerald
This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com
To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – picklepublishing@gmail.com
Or on Facebook
Text originally published in 1992 under the same title.
© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.
We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.
MAGIC AND ULTRA IN THE CHINA-BURMA-INDIA THEATER
BY
STEPHEN K. FITZGERALD, COL, USAF
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
ABSTRACT 5
LIST OF FIGURES 6
INTRODUCTION 7
Terminology 8
MAGIC 9
ULTRA 11
The Special Security Officer System 13
Background to the Reconquest of Burma 17
The Second Burma Campaign 21
North and Central Burma Campaigns 32
The End of the War 39
CONCLUSION 41
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 44
BIBLIOGRAPHY 45
ABSTRACT
The U.S. broke the Japanese diplomatic cipher Purple,
codenamed MAGIC, prior to Pearl Harbor. Decoding success with the various Japanese military codes, codenamed ULTRA, was not achieved until 1943. MAGIC and military (as distinct from naval) ULTRA were the responsibility of the U.S. Army. All MAGIC and ULTRA decrypts were shared with the British. MAGIC and ULTRA were made available to major commanders in the China-Burma-India Theater as they became available. This study makes use of the official U.S. Army history of the theater, intelligence histories, the daily Magic Summaries,
and ULTRA material to examine the operational use of MAGIC and ULTRA. The study focuses on the Second Burma and North Burma Campaigns while making observations about the Salween Campaign and the British defense of India. The study concludes that neither ULTRA nor MAGIC were able to consistently fathom Japanese intentions in Burma and that the ultimate importance of MAGIC and ULTRA was to confirm intelligence obtained from other sources. Nevertheless, as the war went on, ULTRA revealed more and more of Japanese operational goals.
LIST OF FIGURES
1. ULTRA Portrayal of Japanese Dispositions in Burma, 4 February 1944
2. ULTRA Portrayal of Japanese Dispositions in Burma, 15 March 1944
3. ULTRA Portrayal of Japanese Dispositions in Burma, 29 March 1944
INTRODUCTION
The successful World War II U.S. cryptanalysis of the Japanese diplomatic cipher—codenamed MAGIC—and naval codes has been public since at least 1967. {1} Group Captain F. W. Winterbotham’s 1974 memoir about the British breaking of the German Enigma encipherment system—codenamed ULTRA—led, in turn, to declassification of many documents about the equally successful U.S. effort in breaking many of the Japanese military and naval codes, also codenamed ULTRA. {2} This led, in turn, to a number of works about the use of ULTRA to make decisions during World War II. Conspicuous by its absence, however, has been examination of the use of MAGIC and ULTRA in the CBI, the China-Burma-India Theater, a forgotten
theater in many respects. Thus, neither Tuchman’s Stilwell and the American Experience in China nor Allen’s Burma: The Longest War mention signals intelligence in the prosecution of the war in that theater. {3} Of course, diaries and memoirs of principal participants do not mention signals intelligence explicitly because of wartime security classifications, TOP SECRET in the case of MAGIC and ULTRA. {4} Even Lewin’s The American Magic gives short shrift to the CBI. {5} It is clear, in the Pacific at least, ULTRA was used in anticipating Japanese operations and in estimates in support of U.S. planning efforts. {6} The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of the breaking of Japanese codes and ciphers on the planning and conduct of Allied campaigns in Burma, specifically the Second Burma and North Burma Campaigns. {7}
Terminology
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) can be divided into communications intelligence (COMINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT). {8} COMINT—called communications research during World War II—can be divided into three categories: interception and direction finding (DF), traffic analysis, and cryptanalysis. {9} ULTRA generally referred to Japanese military and naval codes while MAGIC was a diplomatic cipher. A code,
writes Kahn,
"consists of thousands of words, phrases, letters and syllables with the codewords or codenumbers (or, more generally, the codegroups) that replace these plaintext elements. {10}"
In a cipher the basic unit is the letter, sometimes the letter-pair, vary rarely larger groups of letters.
{11} Furthermore:
"Most ciphers employ a key, which specifies such things as the arrangement of letters within a cipher alphabet, or a pattern of shuffling in a transposition, or the settings on a cipher machine. {12}"
The mere reversal of the original transformation back into plaintext is called deciphering or decoding whereas the solving of the code or cipher is called decryption: cryptanalysis is the breaking of codes and ciphers. {13}
MAGIC
During World War II, Japanese diplomatic signals were enciphered on a machine introduced in 1937. This machine—the J machine, or Japanese Alphabetical Typewriter, Type 97, 97—shiki O-bun In-ji-Ki, was called Purple
by the United States and was intended to replace the older Red
cipher which, unknown to the Japanese, had been broken by the United States in 1936. {14} The Purple cipher was assiduously attacked by U.S. cryptanalysts who were the beneficiaries of two lucky breaks. The first was a design flaw in the Purple machine itself: it divided the English