The Secret Code-Breakers of Central Bureau: How Australia's Signals-Intelligence Network Shortened the Pacific War

A book about WW2 code breaking in the Pacific - a different tale from Bltechley Park/Enigma fame, but just as fascinating.
A book about war time code breaking is a difficult task. The documentary evidence is secret for decades, and code breaking is only interesting to most people for about 10 pages.
The author of this book has done a marvellous job of bring the esoteric and arcane details to life. The readers gets to know the people involved - quirks and all. The challenges of code breaking are presented, but not laboured. The reality of the code-breakers task is made clear - very often a few steps forward, before hitting a blank wall when cyphers get changed by the enemy.
The story is told against the broader events of the Pacific/Japan show more war which gives explicit context to the intelligence, and how it is used.
I started reading with low expectations, and was very pleasantly surprised by my read. show less

Many books have been written of recent years about Bletchley Park and the British cracking of the German Enigma ciphering machine, and the dissemination of Ultra intelligence. The story of similar work against the Japanese communication network is less know, and the story of Australia involvement even less so. Secret Code-breakers of Central Bureau addresses this hitherto unknown history, correcting aspects of the story where US claims were unwarranted, and identifying key players in the Australian sphere. An interesting aspect is Dufty’s portrayal of the inter-personal and inter-service rivalries that coloured many of the activities. War is messy, and personalities under stress don’t necessarily successfully subjugate their show more personalities to the corporate good. This is a fascinating focus on Australia code-breaking, deciphering, and traffic analysis activities during World War 2. show less