Intel reports (Full Version)

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War History -> Intel reports (10/26/2010 10:30:37 AM)

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/26/2010 10:59:39 AM)

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/26/2010 11:45:10 PM)

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 3:10:39 AM)

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 5:54:47 AM)

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 1:16:28 PM)

Hjal,

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



rtrapasso -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 1:46:55 PM)

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 1:55:52 PM)

quote:

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



No



mike scholl 1 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 3:55:49 PM)

"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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 5:33:25 PM)

quote:

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.



[image]local://upfiles/8095/15AD20D6CE4740208E0A4EF53106D7C7.jpg[/image]



VSWG -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 8:41:45 PM)

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 8:50:46 PM)


quote:

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 9:00:06 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: crsutton

quote:

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.



[image]local://upfiles/8095/15AD20D6CE4740208E0A4EF53106D7C7.jpg[/image]


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



Bullwinkle58 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 9:02:32 PM)

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 9:08:45 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


quote:

ORIGINAL: crsutton

quote:

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.



[image]local://upfiles/8095/15AD20D6CE4740208E0A4EF53106D7C7.jpg[/image]


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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 9:13:10 PM)


quote:

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 9:23:44 PM)


quote:

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 10:24:00 PM)


quote:

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 10:24:26 PM)

quote:

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.


quote:

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 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 10:37:51 PM)

quote:

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.



vonTirpitz -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 11:14:23 PM)

Too bad the Allies can't drop psyops leaflets. At least I'd have a better idea of where the bombs would fall and spice up the "radio transmission" messages a bit. [;)]

http://www.psywarrior.com/B52leaflets.html



Bullwinkle58 -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 11:21:02 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: VSWG


quote:

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.


I too had a huge DB, and probably a crappier PC than you (6 YO single core P4, 2 gigs RAM, XP), and by Sept. 1942 it was taking over 30 minutes to load the DB. I could play while it was cranking, but I had scroll lag galore.

In the course of looking to free up HD space to load Fallout:New Vegas, I erased all of my old Java versions (about 300 meg apiece; the instlaller doesn't dump them when it gets the next), and I went and got the newest Java version to install clean.

I had copied my Tracker files into a hold folder. I reinstalled a fresh Tracker, copied the old DB in, also the preferences, and tried to launch it. Would not load. I got the Heap error, which I hadn't gotten before, telling me I was out of memory. I didn't want to futz with expanding memory allocations, and maybe slow down the game itself, so I started it with no DB, let it build that plus the DB script file, then copied in the old DB.

I finally got it to work, but I lost all of the turn-by-turn data. Don't know why that won't load. However, I have retained all of the sunk ships, pilots, commanders, etc. Now it loads in about 45 seconds. Lost some history, but overall Tracker isn't driving my game sessions like it was when I had to wait for it to finish loading so I could load the turn I played while it was loading. It has current VPs, just not the old spreadsheet and line graph back to 12/7. Everything else is pretty much intact.

Tracker would be perfect if you could turn off modules you never use. The majority of the DB seems, from cranking time, to be th ePilots, and the Commanders. I never use either function in Tracker. The in-game resources are good enough for me. If I could turn those off I think the DB size woudl be far smaller, and loading on my ancient box far faster. Still, I don't want to play without it. I've come to rely on the functions I do use.



SuluSea -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 11:26:41 PM)

War History has a point the Japanese knew AF was short of water. [:D] [:D] [:'(]



DeriKuk -> RE: Intel reports (10/27/2010 11:36:22 PM)

The unmanageable size of the Tracker DB is the main reason for my inability to "connect the dots". Every sixty turns or so I have to refresh the whole thing. It's on the refresh gaps that the trail gets lost. Within the 60-block I've tried to discern patterns, but nothing really useful has shown up. That said, I am playing the Allies in 1942 against a highly competent and aggressive human opponent. My ability to respond beyond staying out of his way, is rather limited.



mike scholl 1 -> RE: Intel reports (10/28/2010 12:54:45 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: War History

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 allied 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."



The problem with this assertion is that there is absolutely NO combat evidence to support the claim. The history of the Pacific campaign is overrun with examples of the Allies using decoded information to bedevil the Japs. Midway is only the most famous incident..., there are hundreds of others. But where are the Japanese intelligence coups? Name the engagements the Japanese won by reading Allied Codes.



stuman -> RE: Intel reports (10/28/2010 1:49:37 AM)

Interesting. And cool site. Thanks for sharing.



stuman -> RE: Intel reports (10/28/2010 1:57:58 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


quote:

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.


Damn, I did not know this was a necessary part of the game. On my way to KFC right now !



Bullwinkle58 -> RE: Intel reports (10/28/2010 1:58:47 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: stuman


quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


quote:

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.


Damn, I did not know this was a necessary part of the game. On my way to KFC right now !


Popeyes, or nothing![:)]



crsutton -> RE: Intel reports (10/28/2010 5:28:58 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: witpqs


quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


quote:

ORIGINAL: crsutton

quote:

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.



[image]local://upfiles/8095/15AD20D6CE4740208E0A4EF53106D7C7.jpg[/image]


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.


I must be living the good life. My game is about 500 turns along and I have had a carrier IDed by Sigint four times. Twice it was at critical points where I really needed to know where KB was....I know that JFBs must cringe at the thought but in real life it happend a lot more often.

I never ever saw it happen in WITP.



War History -> RE: Intel reports (10/28/2010 2:08:27 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1


quote:

ORIGINAL: War History

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 allied 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."



The problem with this assertion is that there is absolutely NO combat evidence to support the claim. The history of the Pacific campaign is overrun with examples of the Allies using decoded information to bedevil the Japs. Midway is only the most famous incident..., there are hundreds of others. But where are the Japanese intelligence coups? Name the engagements the Japanese won by reading Allied Codes.



No evidence? how about the 2 Tokyo Rose reports cited already BEFORE the troops even knew where they were going? I think that is pretty good "evidence" and how many dozens or hundreds more? How many Japanese troops were on Chi-Chi Jima or Ha-Ha Jima? Not nearly the 27,000 on Iwo I suspect. Why would that be the case if the Japanese didn't know they were going to Iwo? Well known that the Japanese knew the allied invasion was coming to Kyushu. With the allies holding Iwo and Halsey pounding airbases from Tokyo north, why would the Japanese suspect Kyushu if not for intercepts et al? I could go on but if you refuse to believe then there is probably very little I can say that would convince you, since you seem to want to live in your little bliss of ignorance of the real situation instead of actually finding out the truth.



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