Joseph Rochefort The Man Who Won Midway From a Basement

🔔 SUBSCRIBE to Smoke Screen Battles for cinematic history documentaries:    / @smokescreenbattles   On the morning of December 8th, 1941, a man in a bathrobe picked up a telephone in a basement beneath Pearl Harbour and was told what had happened above him while he had been working through the night. His name was Joseph Rochefort. His job was to know what Japan was planning before they did it. He had not known. What followed was six months of twenty-hour shifts on a cot in the corner of a windowless room. Six months of not going home, not bathing, not caring about anything except the Japanese naval code running through his IBM machines and the debt he believed he owed. He would crack that code. He would identify Midway as Japan's next target when Washington insisted it was somewhere else. He would give Admiral Nimitz the intelligence that made the ambush possible, the intelligence that positioned three American carriers at a place called Point Luck before Japan knew they were coming. He would win the Battle of Midway from a basement. And then they would send him to manage a floating dry dock for the rest of the war. This is the full story of Joseph Rochefort, the codebreaker, the men from the USS California who helped him, the fresh water trick that proved he was right, and the specific human consequence of what his victory created on the other side of the Pacific. What you will discover in this episode: Why Rochefort slept on a cot in a basement for six months after Pearl Harbour, The musicians from the USS California, the ship he failed to protect, and why he recruited them, How he proved Midway was the target when Washington refused to believe him, The exact intelligence that gave Nimitz the ambush, and what it cost Rochefort to produce it, The kamikaze programme, who they were, what Midway made them, and what their farewell letters actually said, The forty-three years between the battle and the medal, and why the medal arrived nine years after he died This is not a summary. This is the story history forgot to tell properly. 📺 ALSO WATCH — The Five Minutes That Won the Pacific War | Battle of Midway 1942:    • The Five Minutes That Won the Pacific War ...   📺 ALSO WATCH — The Chicken Farmer Who Lied to Hitler:    • The Chicken Farmer Who Lied to Hitler   #JosephRochefort #BattleOfMidway #WW2 #MilitaryHistory #PacificWar #Codebreaker #Kamikaze #WorldWarTwo #NavalHistory #WW2Documentary #SmokeScreenBattles #StationHYPO #Midway1942 #ForgottenHistory #WarHistory CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 0:00 — The Cot in the Corner 2:10 — The Man the Navy Thought It Understood 5:03 — The Musicians from the California 7:52 — The Code 12:11 — The Ambush 15:04 — What Washington Did Next 19:13 — The Way of the Warrior 24:28 — The Men Midway Made 31:40 — Two Kinds of Atonement 35:05 — The Cot — Return