Talk:Station HYPO
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[edit] record speed for a rename requirement
The name of the operation was a code name and in the US military these are usually written with the cAPS LOCK on. For no particualr reason I have ever known. Fingers led to automatic camel case, unfortunately. Title of the article should be Station HYPO. ww 15:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] This link needs fixing
Under the paragraph for "PURPLE diplomatic traffic", there is a link for something called MAGIC, in reference to the cryptography. However the MAGIC is currently linked to a radiio telescope which I'm sure isnt where its supposed to go. Not sure if there is currently a wiki page for the correction MAGIC, but someone should take a quick loot at it and fix it. Coradon 22:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] A convenient truth
I did some minor rewriting, including the drydock ref, as well as changing, "and so HYPO became less important in any case." HYPO wasn't "less important", more a smaller proportion of the total effort, as Holmes explains. Trekphiler 04:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne
It is strange to see the statement that Hypo "after agreement with the British and Dutch to share the effort, worked with Hong Kong and Batavia", since both cities and bases fell to the Japanese in early 1942 (as did the USN station at Corregidor). Especially since there is no recognition here of the US-Australian Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne (FRUMEL). See for example
- By the middle of March 1942, two viable naval radio intelligence centers existed in the Pacific: one in Melbourne, Australia, and one, HYPO, in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In response to the deteriorating situation on Corregidor, a possible threat against Hawaii, and the demand for information from everyone in official Washington, another center (NEGAT) was formed in Washington in February 1942 by the Communications Directorate using elements of OP-20-G. The center on Corregidor (CAST) was no longer affiliated with a fleet command, and its collection and processing capabilities were rapidly disintegrating as a result of evacuations of personnel to Australia and destruction of its facilities by bombing and gunfire. Prior to March, however, its contributions to the rapid advances being made in naval cryptanalysis by the United States Navy were substantial. (Parker, Frederick D. A Priceless Advantage: U.S. Navy Communications Intelligence and the Battles of Coral Sea, Midway, and the Aleutians. Fort Meade MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 1993.)
I will do my best to fix this now. Grant | Talk 05:31, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
- There's now been some back and forth on this and so this note here. CAST was evacuated to Australia by submarine not long before the Rock fell. In Australia, its personnel contributed (IIRC) to both the Central Bureau under MacArthur (US Army, nominally, but it being MacArthur, Arlington Hall in Washington had only nominal control of it) and FRUMEL. Together with the refugees from Hong Kong (now in Ceylon, see Smith's book Emperor's Codes is the title, I think) and the US agencies, OP-20-G and Arlington Hall, and HYPO or what was left of it after Rochefort lost the infighting, all worked on Japanese traffic. So there were not two major centers as this refernce claims, but rather more. Rupert Neve, an Australian cryptographer, went back and forth between Australia and Hong Kong, and IIRC, ended up at FRUMEL. He may even have gotten to ceylon, but my memory fails on that ground. All this is why I revised the earlier edits. ww 05:58, 27 August 2007 (UTC) I
- Sorry, but I have provided a reference from a highly credible source which says that Hypo and FRUMEL were the "big two" Allied sigint stations in the Pacific. I'm reverting until you specify in the text which other stations were as significant as those, with a reference. Regards, Grant | Talk 06:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
- And regrets as well as regards. Note that Parker even specifies "Naval" here. Th Central Bureau under MacArthur was nominally US Army, though as I note above, it being under MacArthur raised certain issues of who was really in charge. Arlington Hall sent out a senior crypto guy (Col Clarke) to investigate, improve security and cooperation/sharing, and Macarthur wounldn't even let him enter the MacArthur area of control!? The take from the discovery of the buried crypto material trunk discovered at Sio, New Guinea, went to Centaal Bureau, for instance. The references I would suggest to you in this connection are three, none of which do I have at hand and so cannot give chapter and verse. S Budiansky, Battle of Wits, J Prados, Combined Fleet Decoded, and M Snith, The Emperor's Codes, (the first two are more rewarding, and I think more to be relied upon). The books Harry Hinsley wrote/edited are the official British story and likely include something relevant, though I can't remember from my hurried reading some time ago.
- I'd also note that the field is, more than most, littered with special pleading, partial information, speculation claimed to be fact, deliberate disinformation of one sort or another, combined with legends / conpiracy theories / and the lot. One must beware over reliance on a source (even Parker in this case) lest one discover one has one's foot mired in the muck. Winterbotham's The Ultra Secret is treacherous in this way. Peter Calvocoressi's book covers much the same materail (he was also at Bletchley Park, though in analysis, not distribution) but is a much more reliable book. Much of Ladislas Farrago's (spelling is from memory) books are quite shaky. Even Gordon Welchman got some things bad wrong in his book, and he worked directly with Alan Turing at BP. The most honored writer, in the field, David Kahn (in the Codebreakers), has a good bit of misemphasis, and missing info (writien before quite a bit of the declassification after he published) plagues him.
- In this case, special pleading for FRUMEL's importance over that of the Brits in Hong Kong/Ceylon, the Dutch (at least before they were run out of town), and US Army efforts is not well.
- I trust all this might satisfy at least some of your concerns? I do suggest we agree what to write before going back to editing over each other in these two articles. ww 09:48, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
- Sorry, but I have provided a reference from a highly credible source which says that Hypo and FRUMEL were the "big two" Allied sigint stations in the Pacific. I'm reverting until you specify in the text which other stations were as significant as those, with a reference. Regards, Grant | Talk 06:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Contradiction: Military value of PURPLE
From this article:
PURPLE produced little of military value, as the Japanese Foreign Ministry was thought by the ultra-nationalists to be unreliable.
This contradicts the following statements in other articles:
Nonetheless, being able to read PURPLE messages gave the Allies a great advantage in the War; for instance, the Japanese ambassador to Germany produced long reports for Tokyo which were encrypted with the PURPLE machine. They included reports on personal discussions with Hitler and a report on a tour of the invasion defenses in Northern France (including the D-Day invasion beaches).
During WW-II, the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, Baron Oshima, who was a military man, avidly studied German military developments and deployments and reported on them at length back to Tokyo via Purple-enciphered messages sent via radio. A good example of this was that he reported on the emplacement of the Atlantic Wall fortifications that the German Wehrmacht was building along the coasts of France and Belgium. Thus, unbeknownst to either the Germans or the Japanese, he was reporting to the Allies much about German military preparations against the forthcoming D-Day invasion of Western Europe.
Nevertheless, decrypted Purple traffic was very valuable, especially later in the war, and was generally referred to as "Magic".
While the other articles do note that most PURPLE traffic was not as useful as would have been otherwise expected, it seems that there was some useful information to come out if it. It also seems that the statement from this article is an unsourced comment.
Perhaps this can be resolved by just rewording the statement from this article?
--Tjohns ✎ 05:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
