Ah well, what is good for the Goose is good for the Gander.
Mmmmmm. Foie gras. Courvoisier.

Why does the jeopardy forum always make me hungry?

theresa

PS No, I am just as much enslaved to my feelings for Mr. Right as ever. But I really like trivia Though I know I am the light weight in this crowd!

im tired of giving questions now.
someone else please
and yes u were right.

OK, fair enough, although the request is a little surprising from someone who accused me of hijacking her thread when I introduced questions before.

Category: Intelligence Matters!

Question #1: This achievement by a small group of analysts at Pearl Harbor is credited with a huge contribution to the U.S. naval victory in the Battle of Midway.

"OK, fair enough, although the request is a little surprising from someone who accused me of hijacking her thread when I introduced questions before."

The only Midway-related trickery I remember involved a crippled aircraft carrier. They patched it up well enough to sail it toward a small country north of Australia (I think) to make it appear it was going to defend that country against a Japanese invasion. This, in turn, forced the Japanese to commit a battle group to fight that carrier, leaving the Japanese with fewer forces to fight for Midway.

Okay, I admit, my memory of the details is very sketchy. But I'm also sure this is NOT what you're looking for. Thinking of the movie... wasn't there a phony message sent, to fool the Japanese about our strategy, knowing they were listening?

Confound you brainiacs -- I really need to read as much as I used to in the old days!

There was, in fact, a phony message sent, but not to fool the Japanese about US strategy. And that, as you rightly guessed, is not the answer to the question. C'mon, people, THINK! You can do this!

I had to look it up and now I'm thirsty. Hadn't heard that story before.

The other bit of deception I referred to involved the Allied defense of New Guinea and the Battle of the Coral Sea. Again, I don't remember the details, and the story doesn't seem to be readily available on the interwebs. I read about it in a History magazine years ago.

Just a guess: they broke Japanese communications code.

theresa <---knows crap all about war history

Right! Good guess, if you say that's what it was. Theresa, you're better at this than you think you are.

The phony message was a report that Midway was short of water. They had broken the code but weren't sure what the objective, which the Japanese referred to by a code name, was. Shortly after the fake report, they broke a message in which the Japanese passed on the information that "codename" was short of water, confirming where the Americans had thought they were headed.

I hadn't heard the story about the crippled carrier. There was one, the Saratoga, damaged at Coral Sea and headed back to Hawaii for repairs, but every other carrier the US had in action (all three of them) in the Pacific went to Midway. The Japanese sent two of its six big carriers to attack the Aleutians, hoping to get the US to split its forces, but the US, armed with knowledge of the Japanese plans, had a better idea.

One of the best accounts is Gordon Prange et. al., Miracle at Midway.

#2: Benedict Arnold was convicted of treason in absentia for giving these to John Andre.

I think I heard the Benedict Arnold bit recently (Jeopardy over the weekend?) but was only paying half attention so I don't know.

On the Coral Sea, the damaged carrier I was thinking of was the Yorktown. BUT the deception involved the Enterprise and Hornet. They were steaming to the battle at Coral but it ended while they were one day out. So, Nimitz ordered them to sail within search-plane radius of the Japanese base at Tulagi to deliberately get spotted. The bet was that Yamamoto would assume they were replacing the damaged Yorktown and sunken Lexington at Coral. But after they were spotted, they went directly to Midway, arriving before Japanese scout subs set up a ring around Midway 2 days before the attack. (Your code breakers helped with that bit of info, too). The thinking is that had the Japanese known those two ships were at Midway, they would have committed two more first class carriers to the battle and likely would have won.