Obtain And I Was There: Pearl Harbor And Midway--Breaking The Secrets Narrated By Edwin T. Layton Shown In Edition

absolute mustread for anyone researching Pearl Harbor, Adm. Layton was Adm. Kimmel's intelligence officer and both were unfairly blamed for the disaster, This book and Kimmel's should be read together, The bottom line is that they did not get the intelligence coming out of Washington, In particular, and what I point out in my book Into the Lion's Mouth, is that neither Kimmel nor Layton received a word of the warning that British double agent Dusko Popov gave to the FBI in Augustnot to mention Popov's actual questionnaire which I have as an appendix in my book.
Excelent telling of events leading up to Pearl harbor and Miday The first book by a topranking American navy officer to answer these questions: : Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor How did they inflict so much damage What went wrong in our system The Pacific war against Japan always remains a topic of interest and this book by the Fleet Intelligence Officer at Pearl Harbor remains relevant today.
Edwin Laytons memoir, appropriately entitled “I Was There” was published inand my wellworn copy was read and filed away many years ago.
My interest in the book was rekindled after seeing the new “Midway” movie near the end of.
One of the lead characters in the movie is Edwin Layton and I decided to look the book over to see how accurate the movie was.


After skimming the first couple of chapters I was pleasantly surprised that the screenwriters had faithfully adapted scenes from the book into the movie and decided that it was time to reread this classic.
The Midway movie and most of Laytons book cover those six months from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the naval victory at Midway.
This book is well overpages and covers a lot more than just the view from Pearl Harbor where Layton served from December of.
He and his coauthors spend a lot of time researching and describing the seemingly inevitable forces that drove Japan to attack the United States as well as the many mistakes and missed opportunities that led to the US Navy being caught unprepared by the Japanese attack on December,.
Most of these mistakes were made in Washington but the blame was laid on the local commanders at Pearl Harbor: Admiral Kimmel and General Short.
Layton then goes on to describe the naval intelligence breakthroughs made by the codebreakers at Pearl Harbor that lead to the destruction of four Japanese carriers six months later.


This book really functions at two levels: to show how Layton and Roachefort and their team managed to read Japanese naval communications enough to allow Admiral Nimitz to ambush and defeat a much stronger opponent.
This naval intelligence work turned the tide of battle and led to the ultimate destruction of the Japanese Navy.
The other underlying theme that runs through the book is the authors disgust on how Admiral Kimmel was denied access to critical information by his superiors in Washington DC and then made the scapegoat for their failures.
Similarly, the victory at Midway should have shown the value of the team working for Admiral Nimitz instead it led to more political interference from Washington and the removal of Roachefort from his position.


The book is extremely wellwritten and difficult to put down other comments from Leyton also found their way to theMidway movie.
Layton's descriptions of the political infighting that seemed to pervade the US Naval Intelligence community during this time period were very disturbing and probably cost the lives of sailors and marines because their commanders were not getting the intelligence that they needed.
The best summary of intelligence, code, ciphers and utilizing this information
to help your Admirals and military to assist their task to take the battle to the enemies for a successful conclusion.
This also includes where personal politics and jealousy endangered the safety of our nation,
This also credits Nimitz for using his intuition and this information to help make a correct decision.
Wow this book is dense

Admiral Layton is said to have kept voluminous, thorough notes on the lead up to WWand of the war in the Pacific, and his diaries and recollections has been turned into this account ofwellalmost everyone of any note in the Pacific naval theater.
He served primarily in naval intelligence, and he has rather a low opinion of some of the politicians and brass who, he avers, kept vital information out of the hands of the commanders at Pearl Harborinformation that may have enabled them to prevent or defend against the sneak attack of December,.


And boy, does he love his codes, Detailed information about codes and ciphers they're not the same, which unit got which messages to decode, how they broke the codesif one isn't as enamored of codebreaking, it gets a bit longwinded.


Adm Layton died before the book was completed and his coauthors had access to his notes and the cooperation of Mrs Layton.


Recommended for any WWmilitary history buffs or NSC types, After watching the second Midway movie, I noticed that it was based in part on this book.
I liked both movies, btw, . . they cover different aspects so it's not really redundant to watch them both, Plus,different eras of moviemaking, Plus, footage recorded by John Ford,
So, I looked up the book once I saw the cover, I thought, "I have that book!" After a thorough search of my bookshelves, I turned it up.

It is long, far longer than it needed to be, but that's okay, I understand that Layton had a LOT he wanted to say and that his editor probably would have had to strangle him in order to get him to cut it.

It certainly answered a lot of the questions that people have about both

Pearl Harbor and Midway both the events and the people involved Roosevelt no, he didn't leave us open to attack, and MacArthur yes, still a jackass.

In my view, he focused way too much on vindicating the officers he served with by the end of the book I just skimmed over those sections.
But the stuff on breaking the Japanese codes and getting higherups to believe the decryptions, well, that's good stuff. Although substantially completed in first draft, the memoirs of Admiral Layton were not finished until after his death.
Late declassification of relevant documents served to support Layton's contention that Admiral Kimmel and Gen Short were made scapegoats for the Pearl Harbor disaster.
His well documented and carefully reasoned account logically portrays the failures of the Navy Department to share the vital intelligence needed to prevent the disaster.
Layton's later service with Admiral Nimitz enhances our understanding of the Pacific naval war, If you are interested in the value of military intelligence to change the course of events this is a must read!.