Pearl Harbor and Midway: the decisive influence of two men on the outcomes

Beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the war in the Pacific was a largely losing campaign for the Americans until the Battle of Midway, on 4–5 June 1942. The American ability to predict this Japanese attack the second time around served as the turning point for the war in the Pacific. And the story of how the Americans turned a catastrophic failure into an impressive cryptological achievement involved the story of one man, Joe Rochefort, convincing another man, Admiral Chester Nimitz who commanded the Pacific Fleet, that he could trust his analysis of the intelligence he compiled and analyzed.