← Back to the front page

40 Fascinating But Lesser Known Facts About WWII

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2019 25 min

World War II - European theatre of World War II — Raising the Red Banner over the Reichstag. Anarkismo

10. American Code Breakers Tricked the Japanese Into Revealing Their Intent to Attack Midway

US cryptanalysts had cracked Japanese ciphers, and knew that they planned to launch a massive attack against a target codenamed “AF”. Unfortunately, nobody knew what “AF” was. So US Navy cryptanalyst Joseph Rochefort, who suspected that AF was Midway, set out to confirm that hunch. He directed the radio station at Midway to send an uncoded message, to the effect that its water purification system had broken down, and that Midway was running out of drinking water. 24 hours later, American code breakers intercepted a Japanese message to the effect that “AF” was running out of water.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.