raharris1973
Well-known member
WI the Japanese encrypters outsmarted the US ‘Black Chamber’ before/during Washington Naval Talks?
In OTL, the US read the Japanese delegation’s secret comms and learned their rock bottom offer was a 5–5-3 naval strength ratio, not their public facing demand for at least a 10-10-7 ratio.
what if the Japanese changed their codes shortly enough before the conference that the Americans couldn’t break them during the talks?
could Japan secure in the treaty its desired 10-10-7 naval ratio?
without being forced to settle for less, would Japanese naval advocates be less neurotic in the 1920s and beyond?
if the ‘black chamber’ does not have this success reinforcing US diplomacy versus Japan, Herbert Yardley won’t have the incident to brag about in his book, which in OTL further insulted the Japanese, who had already paid him for similar information.
is this enough to significantly keep Japanese navalists and militarists on the right side of sanity?
A bonus what if:
What if Stimson never defunded the ‘black chamber’ decoding operation, about which he said gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail?
this might have been avoided if Yardley hadn’t joked about reading all the Vatican's traffic.
In OTL, the US read the Japanese delegation’s secret comms and learned their rock bottom offer was a 5–5-3 naval strength ratio, not their public facing demand for at least a 10-10-7 ratio.
what if the Japanese changed their codes shortly enough before the conference that the Americans couldn’t break them during the talks?
could Japan secure in the treaty its desired 10-10-7 naval ratio?
without being forced to settle for less, would Japanese naval advocates be less neurotic in the 1920s and beyond?
if the ‘black chamber’ does not have this success reinforcing US diplomacy versus Japan, Herbert Yardley won’t have the incident to brag about in his book, which in OTL further insulted the Japanese, who had already paid him for similar information.
is this enough to significantly keep Japanese navalists and militarists on the right side of sanity?
A bonus what if:
What if Stimson never defunded the ‘black chamber’ decoding operation, about which he said gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail?
this might have been avoided if Yardley hadn’t joked about reading all the Vatican's traffic.