The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) entering Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, on December 2, 2016, with the USS Arizona Memorial in the foreground.
Credit: U.S. Navy/Petty Officer 2nd Class Aiyana S. Paschal
(Inside Science) -- Everyone knew it was coming. The day before it came they even knew when. What the U.S. couldn't figure out was where.
No one expected an attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. Even after the U.S. decrypted the Japanese diplomatic cipher, the Japanese still managed to nearly destroy America's Pacific fleet and guarantee the U.S.'s entry into World War II.
The story of the U.S. code breakers at the dawn of America's involvement in WWII is one of brilliant technology, ingenuity and intuition hampered by incompetence, miscommunication, and lethal assumptions. https://www.livescience.com/57117-decrypting-japanese-cipher-couldnt-prevent-pearl-harbor.html
