Midway "AF needs fresh water"- They saw it coming and turned the Pacific War. Denizens of 'the dungeon' helped turn the tide of World War II

Jap code name for Midway was AF.  The code was confired
by an open decoy report that Midway was running out of
 fresh water. The Japanese then sent a coded message to
Yamamoto's fleet saying 'AF' was out of fresh water, thus
confirming the code name and the fleet's target.

Japan was caught flat footed by the Doolittle Raid. It feared other attacks so it decided to extend its defensive ring eastward into the Pacific to include Midway Island. This set the stage for The Battle of the Coral Sea, then the miracle Battle of Midway. The US was concentrating its effort of the War in Europe first, leaving the fight in the Pacific to be fought with what was just available. The Americans were fighting the Japanese with one hand tide behind their back. Code breaking loosed the hand. Captain Rochefort was the leaded of the Naval Code Breakers and was the unsung hero of the Battle that turned back Japan. Rochefort may have stepped on some sensitive toes.

Whatever the reason, Rochefort was repeatedly recommended by Nimitz for the Distinguished Service Medal — and rejected every time.
It wasn’t until the 1980s, when the code-breakers’ intelligence was declassified, that Mr. Showers spearheaded an effort to finally get the captain the honor he deserved. In 1985, nine years after his death, Rochefort was given the Distinguished Service Medal.
In a ceremony at the White House, President Reagan presented the award to Rochefort’s two children.

Denizens of 'the dungeon' helped turn the tide of World War II - Washington Times

By Thomas Floyd   Friday, June 1, 2012 

It was during the spring of 1942 that the tide of the Pacific War began to shift — not in a battle at sea, it 

turned out, but in the depths of "the dungeon." That was the nickname for the cramped basement space in the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, conceived as a storage room before being converted to an office for Capt. Joseph Rochefort's "Station Hypo" code-breaking team during World War II. 

Rendered cold and damp by the installation of an overzealous air conditioner, the dungeon, as its moniker  would suggest, didn't offer the most luxurious of working environments. While the shadow of Japan's  control over the Pacific grew, the American code-breakers worked day and night in their dark, dank  accommodations, desperately hoping to find an advantage against a force of naval precision unlike any they had seen before. 

And that's exactly what they did. Late that April, they cracked the empire's naval code. On June 4, 1942, a  Japanese fleet featuring four aircraft carriers set its sights on Midway, a small coral outpost used by U.S.  forces in Hawaii. When they arrived, the forewarned Americans were ready. 

"We sank all four [carriers] the first day of the battle," said 92-year-old Donald "Mac" Showers, the last  surviving member of Capt. Rochefort's code-breaking unit. "We were able to do that because we knew  where they were, what they were up to and what the schedule was." 

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