On Mar 16, 10:16 am, "a425couple" wrote:
>
> I believe the two main reasons the program ended
> were because the US realized it was a fairly serious
> threat and #1 imposed censorship so Japan
> would not know results, and #2 as this cite explains,
> took very serious steps to eliminate the threat (make
> "hydrogen" "scarce").
>
>
http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/forensic_geology
>/japenese%20vengenance%2... "The work of the MGU
> conclusively identified northeastern coastal Japan
> as the source area for the sand ballast, and the likely
> point of launching.....These plants were conclusively
> destroyed by American B-29 bombers....
>
> (IMHO very nice diagrams & pictures & map at this site.)
I agree. Your cite is an excellent one and substantiates
the General Wilbur site I referenced but with much more
detail. In the U.S. the secret was very well-kept that the
balloon bombs existed and even the media cooperated in
the censorship effort until almost near the end of the
operation when a woman and several children were killed
after finding a downed balloon near their picnic site, and,
curious as to what it was, started to move it and the bomb
exploded. I believe this caused a "leak" and it was
reported by some news sources.
However, Japan never got the word of whether or
not their balloon bombs were a success or falure. In
that connection it should be noted that Japan was not
too good at following up on important intelligence when
they did or could have, got the word.
One case in point was months before Pearl
Harbor when the German Embassy in Washington had
advised Berlin (which relayed the information to Tokyo)
that the Germans, had learned "through "absolutely
reliable sources" that the U.S. had broken the Japanese
coding system and had been reading messages between
Tokyo and its ambassador Oshima in Berlin.
This revelation was relayed back to Ambassador
Nomura in Washington who advised Tokyo that "the most
stringent precautions are taken by custodians of all codes
and ciphers." This apparently satisfied Tokyo which
disregarded the information as an unfounded rumor,
although it was true, of course, that we had been reading
their diplomatic traffic through the MAGIC system and even
read the above mentioned exchange between Nomura
and Tokyo.
Thereafter the U.S. took even stronger security
measures to protect knowledge of MAGIC from being
leaked. However, there was another occasion which
caused the U.S. code-breakers to be nervous and that one
involved a possible leak to the Japanese that we were
breaking their naval codes.
On June 7, 1942, as the Battle of Midway wound
down, a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune wrote a story
which appeared on the front page of that newspaper with the
headline, "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea"
followed by a text which read in part "...information in the
hands of the Navy Department was so definite...that...
guesses were even made that Dutch Harbor or Midway
might be targets."
Although the story did not directly refer to codes or
communications intelligence, the Navy feared that the
Japanese would realize that the "details could have come
only from a reading of their coded messages." As it was,
the Japanese failed to pick up on that knowledge also, and
just short of one year after Midway Navy code breakers were
able to decipher a Japanese message which led to the
interception and shoot-down of Admiral Yamamoto.
[For details see "The Codebreakers" by David Kahn.]
WJH