The On The Roof Gang A total of 176 (150 Navy and 26 Marines) enlisted radio operators were specially

trained at a unique school located on the roof of the old Navy Department Building during 1928-1941. Known as the "On-The-Roof" Gang (OTRG), they were trained to intercept and analyze foreign radio communications. This group of dedicated and skilled operators formed the vanguard of the U.S. Naval Communications Intelligence efforts and laid the cornerstone of Naval Cryptology. Of the original number of 176, there are now a total of 5 known survivors. October 1, 1928 - The first class at school for enlisted Navy and Marine Corps radio intercept operators (The "On-the-Roof-Gang") is held. The OTRG Association was dissolved in September 1992 and the administration of OTRG affairs is now being handled by the NCVA.

The Purple Code The Japanese had obtained an Enigma machine from Germany, and decided to use the same principle to encode their messages. As a result, the device used by Japanese diplomats in World War II was called Purple. In Japan, Purple was titled 97-shiki O-bun In-ji-ki, which means Alphabetical Typewriter '97. The number 97 came from the Japanese calendar year 2597 (equivalent to 1937). Informally the Americans called the machine "J." the diplomatic "Purple" and the intercepts were known as 'Magic". Rather than using rotors operated by key presses from the keyboard, the '97 employed electro-mechanical "stepping switches". An electromagnet, acting through a pawl and ratchet mechanism, caused rotating contacts to pass over banks of electrical contacts. The overall machine, although constructed differently, was equivalent to a four rotor Enigma with electric typewriters on each side. A message was entered on one typewriter, and printed out, encoded, on the second. Although this eliminated some errors in copying an encode from illuminated light bulbs, the weight of the stepping switches and typewriters made it far less portable than the German field Enigma. The Alphabetical typewriter '97 had a polyalphabetic foundation. It could encipher English letters and created substitutions numbering in hundreds of thousands. This capability presented an immense challenge. Having previously uncovered Tokyo's naval conference codes, American analysts were familiar with specific salutations and closings. Military radio stations around the Pacific constantly monitored radio telegraph transmissions. Every possible clue was sought. Frequencies and patterns slowly began to emerge. Blanks were to be filled by such lucky breaks as Japanese cipher senders making mistakes and then repeating dispatches to make corrections. The American teams began to piece together the obscure permutations. In August, 1940 they had their first awkward but readable solution. Cryptanalysts working for the Signals Intelligence Service' (SIS) of the U.S. Army knew how crucial it was to decipher and read Japanese secret messages. But this new code, "Purple," wasn't breaking easily. For eighteen months the team struggled with this difficult Japanese diplomatic code. Then, one day in September 1940, Genevieve Grotian made a discovery that would change the course of history. By analyzing and studying the intercepted coded messages, she found a correlation that no one else had yet detected. This breakthrough enabled other cryptanalysts to find similar links. Then, William Friedman and members of the S.I.S. (U.S. signal Intelligence Service) actually built a crude but serviceable model that was a remarkable imitation of Purple. Soon this product of American engineering and mathematical insight was help in reproducing the most guarded Purple communications. So impressed was one USN Rear Admiral that he called the process Magic, and the nickname stuck. Magic was in operation the night of December 6, 1941. Japanese embassy dispatches were being picked up by Navy radio stations and sent on to the Navy Department in Washington D.C. By the morning of December 7, thirteen parts of a Japanese government reply regarding negotiations had been deciphered. The fourteenth segment of the message was Tokyo's decision to break negotiations with the United States by 1 p.m. that same day. OP-20-G (the

American Navy counterpart) and S.I.S. cryptanalysts knew this by 7:30 a.m. Washington time. It was not yet dawn in Hawaii, and with dawn it was too late to stop the attack. Battle of Midway, 4-7 June 1942 The Battle of Midway, fought over and near the tiny U.S. mid-Pacific base at Midway atoll, represents the strategic high water mark of Japan's Pacific Ocean war. Prior to this action, Japan possessed general naval superiority over the United States and could usually choose where and when to attack. After Midway, the two opposing fleets were essentially equals, and the United States soon took the offensive. Japanese Combined Fleet commander Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto moved on Midway in an effort to draw out and destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet's aircraft carrier striking forces, which had embarrassed the Japanese Navy in the mid-April Doolittle Raid on Japan's home islands and at the Battle of Coral Sea in early May. He planned to quickly knock down Midway's defenses, follow up with an invasion of the atoll's two small islands and establish a Japanese air base there. He expected the U.S. carriers to come out and fight, but to arrive too late to save Midway and in insufficient strength to avoid defeat by his own well-tested carrier air power. Yamamoto's intended surprise was thwarted by superior American communications intelligence, which deduced his scheme well before battle was joined. This allowed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, to establish an ambush by having his carriers ready and waiting for the Japanese. On 4 June 1942, in the second of the Pacific War's great carrier battles, the trap was sprung. The perseverance, sacrifice and skill of U.S. Navy aviators, plus a great deal of good luck on the American side, cost Japan four irreplaceable fleet carriers, while only one of the three U.S. carriers present was lost. The base at Midway, though damaged by Japanese air attack, remained operational and later became a vital component in the American trans-Pacific offensive.

The Attack on the USS LIBERTY On June 8, 1967, during the Six Day War, Israeli war planes and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering ship, while it was on a surveillance mission off the shores of El Arish, in the Sinai Peninsula. 34 Americans died and 171 were injured. Israel claimed it mistook the Liberty for an enemy vessel. Several Israeli and U.S. investigations corroborated that claim. In 1999, moreover, a National Security Agency report from 1981 was released claiming that "the tragedy resulted not only from Israeli miscalculation but also from faulty U.S. communications practices." Since July 2003, this report has been available on the NSA Web site accompanied by a recording of radio communications between Israeli pilots made by a U.S. spy plane on the scene throughout the episode. The NSA report and other documents declassified since the incident - including a trove of government materials released in January 2004 - support findings that the bombing was a case of mistaken identity. USS PUEBLO Just how confrontational the North Koreans were willing to be became painfully evident on 23 January 1968,when they seized the USS Pueblo;a virtually unarmed US intelligence collection vessel. The unprovoked assault occurred in international waters, killing one crewman, FN Duane D. Hodges. The 82 remaining crewmembers were taken prisoner. The captives, many of them NSG cryptologists, endured North Korean captivity and maltreatment for almost a year before being released. ," The Pueblo incident arrived in the darkest period in the history of the Naval Security Group. Only a half-year before, on 8 June 1967, another Navy intelligence collection ship, the USS Liberty, was attacked and nearly sunk by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats in an incident that has never been fully explained. Thirty-three sailors were killed (most were NSG personnel), and nearly all the rest of the crew were wounded.

An equally tragic and inexplicable incident for NSG was soon to come. In the wake of the Pueblo seizure, an all-out war with North Korea seemed possible, even likely. The Pentagon, therefore, ordered increased intelligence collection against the Communist hermit kingdom, and the Navy played its part by adding additional reconnaissance flights. Normandy Invasion, June 1944 Crossing the English Channel on "D-Day", 6 June 1944 The English Channel, nearly a hundred miles wide between Portsmouth, England, and the Normandy beaches, was a formidable military barrier. Early in the previous century it had thwarted Napoleon. In 1940 it stopped the conquering Germans. Now, in the spring of 1944, the Allies needed thousands of ships and craft to transport their armies across the Channel and begin the liberation of France. To compound the difficulties of a long water passage, the always problematical weather could fatally disrupt landing operations, and the Germans had liberally planted sea mines in the central Channel and off likely invasion beaches. A storm delayed the operation, originally scheduled for 5 June, after much of the invasion force had left embarkation points, forcing landing vessels back into port, where their crews and passengers endured the wait amid often crowded and uncomfortable circumstances. Presented with a better forecast for the sixth, General Eisenhower made a tentative decision late in the evening of 4 June to get shipping moving, and gave the final "O.K. We'll go." shortly after 4AM on the fifth. By then, minesweepers were clearing shipping lanes through a fifteen mile wide southward path. Invasion shipping, nearly sixty separate convoys in the initial assault, with more behind, headed for the target area via a wide-topped-shaped route, gathering off the Isle of Wight from various ports along England's southern coast, then turning south to cross the Channel in the recently swept lanes. Many vessels towed barrage balloons, protection against German bombing attacks that didn't come, since the enemy's weak air reconnaissance kept him ignorant of what was happening. The passage across was anything but smooth, especially for infantry and tank landing craft, many of whose passengers suffered hours of seasickness during the night of 5-6 June. As the convoys approached Normandy, their courses flared out somewhat, taking them to staging areas off the individual landing beaches. Most ships were in their places well before dawn. Further inshore, the busy minesweepers continued their work, opening safe (or at least relatively safe) channels and working areas for landing boats and gunfire support ships. Overhead in the darkness, a steady procession of hundreds of transport planes and gliders moved over Normandy, dropping U.S. paratroopers inland of the westernmost ("Utah") beach. British parachutists descended in the southeastern part of the assault zone. Behind the initial waves of ships and planes came more, in a flow that would continue for months to come, reinforcing the initial landings and providing logistics support for the armies as they consolidated their beachhead, broke out, and fought their way across northwestern Europe.