Re: Navajo Code Talkers
- From: William Black <william.black@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:47:01 -0500
narrledudh@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Nov 3, 10:13 am, "Dave" <cut_spam_dkenne...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Hello all,
I'm reading 'Navajo Weapon' by Sally McClain. It contains charts of
English words, their Navajo pronunciations and their meanings.
The word used for battleship meant whale, colonel was silver eagle,
dive-bomber was chicken hawk, are some examples.
This seems like an example of a one-time pad encryption but without a secret
key.
Since one-time pads are designed to be used only once, why weren't the
Japanese able to break this code after repeated use?
It was interesting that the book says that the army had a group of
Comanche code-talkers in the ETO and that the army and marines each kept
their program secret from the other
I'm anything but a linguist or Navaho expert, but ISTR a fact (?) to
the effect that there were only four or five people in the world
(outside the USA itself) who could speak the language with any
fluency. Given that, and the observations made by the OP's, it
doesn't seem surprising to me that they were effectively
'unbreakable.'
I believe it was also tried by the USAAF in Europe,
But...
My understanding is that one of the people who did speak the languages, and who was an expert on Amerindian languages, was an elderly professor at a distinguished German university, and that's why the idea didn't work terribly well in Europe.
--
William Black
"Any number under six"
The answer given by Englishman Richard Peeke when asked by the Duke of Medina Sidonia how many Spanish sword and buckler men he could beat single handed with a quarterstaff.
.
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