Captain, U.S.N. Laurance Frye Safford (October 22, 1893 – May 15, 1973) was a

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...

cryptologist This is a list of cryptographers. Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties called adversaries. Pre twentieth century * Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi: wrote a (now lost) book ...

. He established the Naval cryptologic organization after

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, and headed the effort more or less constantly until shortly after the Japanese attack on

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reci ...

. His identification with the Naval effort was so close that he was the Friedman of the Navy.

Biography

Safford was born in 1893 in

Somerville, Massachusetts Somerville ( ) is a city located directly to the northwest of Boston, and north of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the city had a total population of 81, ...

. He secured an appointment to

Annapolis Annapolis ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of Maryland. It is the county seat of Anne Arundel County and its only incorporated city. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east o ...

, and graduated fifteenth in the class of 1916. In January 1924 he was called from command of a minesweeper off the China coast to head the "research desk" of the Code and Signal Section within the Office of Naval Communications. In the beginning his sole task was to exploit a Japanese naval codebook that had been filched from the Japanese consulate in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. To do this he had four civilian clerical employees. Safford promoted the effort throughout the Navy, attracting Agnes Meyer Driscoll,

Joseph Rochefort Joseph John Rochefort (May 12, 1900 – July 20, 1976) was an American naval officer and cryptanalyst. He was a major figure in the United States Navy's cryptographic and intelligence operations from 1925 to 1946, particularly in the Battle of M ...

, Joseph Wenger, and others who were to lead the business through

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and into the postwar period. He was the first to begin organizing the worldwide Naval collection and direction finding effort, so that when the United States entered World War II it already had a system of intercept stations. Safford himself was wrenched out of the job in 1926, returning in 1929. He remained with the effort except for another sea tour from 1932 to 1936. Meanwhile, the effort that he headed broke Japanese naval codes, and began mechanizing its operations with the addition of

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

equipment. Safford himself was directly involved with building cryptographic machines, and collaborated with the Army's Frank Rowlett in the invention of the Sigaba, a cipher machine not known to be broken by any country during World War II. Safford promoted collaboration with the Army on several fronts and was mostly responsible for the Navy entry into a joint effort with the Army on the Japanese diplomatic systems. He recognized the signs of war that appeared in the diplomatic traffic, and he tried to get a warning message to Pearl Harbor several days before the attack but

Director of Naval Communications {{Refimprove, date=March 2017 Director of Naval Communications was a post on the staff of the United States Navy's Chief of Naval Operations responsible for organizing, administering and operating the Naval Communications Service. In Navy parlance ...

Admiral Noyes rebuffed him. Organizationally, he promoted a decentralized system with Naval COMINT sections in Washington, Hawaii, and Manila. He gave the chief Japanese naval code problem to the organization in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

, and named

to head the effort. He also gave Rochefort a blank check to obtain the very best Navy cryptanalysts. That paid off in the spring of 1942, when Rochefort's team, though unable to break

JN-25 The vulnerability of Japanese naval codes and ciphers was crucial to the conduct of World War II, and had an important influence on foreign relations between Japan and the west in the years leading up to the war as well. Every Japanese code was e ...

, the main Japanese naval operational code, was able to deduce important information from it, largely through

traffic analysis Traffic analysis is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observ ...

, in time to help win the

Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II, Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of t ...

. Rochefort's team was also able to trick the Japanese Navy into sending a message that revealed that it was Midway that was the focus of the attack, not the Aleutians, as Washington cryptanalysts maintained. While many historians have insisted that Rochefort's team failed to crack the JN-25B, Naval code the declassified intercepts refute the notion. In August 1970, Safford reaffirmed his views: "By Dec.1/41, we had the code solved to a readable extent."(Wilford, Decoding Pearl Harbor: USN Cryptanalysis and the Challenge of JN-25B in 1941). But this is sharply disputed in ''Tower of Skulls'' by Richard B. Frank, citing a report written during the war that says that no messages in JN-25 were read in 1941. He was promoted to captain shortly after the United States entered the war, on January 1, 1942. Power struggles with the Navy soon led to Safford's ouster in February 1942, with John R. Redman and Joseph Wenger heading sections of

OP-20-G OP-20-G or "Office of Chief Of Naval Operations (OPNAV), 20th Division of the Office of Naval Communications, G Section / Communications Security", was the U.S. Navy's signals intelligence and cryptanalysis group during World War II. Its mission ...

.* Safford was sidelined for the remainder of the war, as ultimately was Rochefort. He retired from active duty in 1953 and died in May 1973.

Amelia Earhart

About 1970 he began a lengthy analysis of the 1937 flight across the Pacific on which

Amelia Earhart Amelia Mary Earhart ( ; July 24, 1897 – January 5, 1939) was an American aviation pioneer. On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the world. During her li ...

disappeared, and after establishing the intricate radio transmission documentation he concluded "poor planning, worse execution". A book was subsequently published: ''Earhart's Flight into Yesterday: The Facts Without the Fiction'' by Laurance F. Safford with Cameron A. Warren & Robert R. Payne (c2003, Paladwr Press, McLean VA USA)

Works

* ''Earhart's Flight into Yesterday: The Facts Without the Fiction'' (Paladwr Press, 2002)

References

External links

Laurance Safford in NSA Hall of Fame
{{DEFAULTSORT:Safford, Laurance 1893 births 1973 deaths People from Somerville, Massachusetts United States Navy officers United States Naval Academy alumni Intelligence analysts 20th-century cryptographers United States Navy personnel of World War I United States Navy personnel of World War II Recipients of the Legion of Merit American cryptographers