There is a new movie out about the most significant naval engagement of the last century. Perhaps all the centuries. Reviews say the cinematographic treatment is extraordinary, and retired Admiral Sam Cox, Director of the Navy’s History and Heritage Center, was on-scene to nudge the script back to events that actually happened.

We had it better at the apex of the Willow Bar in Arlington, where we could actually time travel. Our tribe of Naval Intelligence was blessed with the long mentorship of RADM Donald “Mac” Showers. He was a great and lively man and those who were blessed to know him were able to travel with him across the decades and feel the texture of those times that now seem mythic.

I have not seen it yet. I am hoping they treat Joe Rochefort with respect. To my knowledge, Mac never mentioned him wearing an embroidered smoking gown in The Dungeon of Building One at the Pearl Harbor Shipyard that housed Station HYPO.

(CDR Joseph Rochfort, USN)

Joe’s contributions to the draw (but strategic victory) at Coral Sea were immeasurable, saving Australia. With Eddie Layton, he laid out the prospects for a major fleet action in the mid-Pacific with Admiral Chester Nimitz.

But Mac Showers had a desk in the middle of the bullpen near the IBM punchcard equipment. He reported directly to Jasper Holmes, a medically-retired submariner who had come back to active duty to work with the radio-heads and code-breakers. He was a guy, who in a sane world, would be remembered mostly as a writer of fiction in the Saturday Evening Post.

Instead, he changed our world.

(LT Jasper Homes at his desk in The Dungeon).

But the world is not sane, and Jasper wound up tricking the inscrutable East into the biggest screw-up in the military history of the 20th Century, which is going a long way.

Mac knew him well, and Jasper wrote his own book about their time together. “Double Edged Secrets” was the title, and it will say everything you need to know.

That is why our friendship with Mac meant so much. With him, these heroes are all still alive. And the villains, too.

Jasper had been recalled to active duty in mid-1941 with the anticipation of the outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific. His original duties were shore-based at the headquarters of the 14th Naval District. Mac said he essentially assigned himself the task of tracking of merchant vessels across the Pacific.

In peacetime, it is simple enough to use ship’s weather reports to provide locational data, and this association with merchant traffic brought him closer and closer to the Spooks.

The Big Surprise on December 7th was naturally a shock. Admiral Husband Kimmel, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, and Lt. General Short of the Army, responsible for island security, were thrown under the Honolulu Transit Bus and relieved for cause. Back in Washington, Chief of Naval Personnel Chester Nimitz was tagged to command the battered Pacific Fleet over dozens of officers more senior.

Washington would not admit that it was bitter rivalries between Army and Navy, and within the Navy itself that exacerbated the blind spot that permitted the Japanese to land a knock-out blow on the Pacific Fleet.

Jasper was propelled into the maelstrom of the response in the Combat Intelligence Unit- Station HYPO. While not initially allowed access to the sensitive COMINT mission, he swiftly became integral to it and was one of the handful of people indoctrinated into the ULTRA program.

Because he had no direct cryptographic or Japanese language experience, CDR Joe Rochefort decided Jasper’s experience as a submarine officer would best be harnessed in assessing various sources of intelligence to determine the strength, composition and movements of various Japanese military units. LT Holmes became chief of the Information Section of the CIU- later known as the Estimates Branch.

That is what Jasper was up to in Estimates, and with Mac’s support and his two Petty Officers, he was going to do it. The big deal- the miracle of intelligence- happened at the corner of Mac’s desk. Jasper had a plan to feed bogus information into the US Fleet Broadcast about broken distillation equipment, and see if it was reflected in IJN operational traffic. If so, it might help correlate the intended target of the Japanese Main Body.

Oh, yeah, I could tell you the whole story about how Jasper foxed the Japanese, but you could always just look it up. The first volume of Mac’s bio is posted on the NIP website: www.navintpro.org.

But my favorite stories from the Battle? There were once pneumatic tubes that carried cylindrical containers containing messages- the bunnies. They had a distinctive rattle and wheeze, and were kind of neat in the places they were still used. The one at PACFLT HQ delivered the cargo to the drop in the basement.

As you might imagine, the Command was sort of anxious about the consequences of hurling everything at the place that Eddie and Joe and Jasper assured them the Japanese would be. Mac sat there all day, waiting for news from the bunny tube. It didn’t happen during the actual battle. Apparently they were busy.

The computer graphics in the trailers for the movie look great. I can’t wait to see it.

– Vic

Copyright 2019 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com