Early radio intelligence efforts were subjected to strict budgets, political infighting and a failure to understand its potential value to operational commanders.  Radio intelligence, which includes traffic analysis, HFDF fixes and decrypts, provided a great advantage to Allied naval operations in the Pacific during WWII.  However, even such advantage cannot make up for insufficient numbers of ships and aircraft, poor training, errant equipment, and incompetent commanders of such fleet and naval air units.  After the initial expansion of the Japanese in the Asian and Southwestern Pacific areas, the dedicated work of naval radio intelligence personnel since the 1920’s soon began to bear fruit.  Our limited forces could be concentrated on Japanese targets such as the Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal.  When U.S. naval or naval air forces were nearly equal to IJN forces, radio intelligence often provided an advantage to snatch  victory from a defeat situation.  As Allied naval and military forces began to outstrip Japanese production, the advantage of radio intelligence was no longer crucial.  Nevertheless, naval radio intelligence capabilities kept increasing and continued to provide Allied planners and operational commanders with intelligence far superior to anything the Japanese could provide to their naval commanders.

    Except for some personal experiences, all the material provided above came from first rate researchers, writers and historical documents.  For those who wish to verify any fact or statement in this article or to read more on any phase of this intelligence review, the following sources are recommended: Combined Fleet Decoded, by John Prados, And I Was There, by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, Guadalcanal, by Richard B. Frank, MacArthur’s Ultra, by Edward J. Drea, Attack on Yamamoto, by Carroll V. Glines, Double-Edged Secrets, by W. J. Holmes, and cryptologic documents from Record Groups 38 and 457 of the National Archives, College Park, MD too numerous to mention.