PC: The Native American codes are cracked

During World War II, is it plausible for either the Japanese or the Germans to successfully crack the Native American (Navajo, Comanche, Mohawk, etc) codes used by the United States? What would need to happen for these codes to be cracked by the Axis?
 
The native languages are so unrelated that if one was cracked, the others would likely still work for a time. The American advantage is time. That time is not available in the short war period, nor is the personal contact between people that slowly breaks the language barriers.
 
It wasn't that they couldn't be cracked, it couldn't be cracked in a timely matter, since the code talkers were used to relay tactical info that had a very short usefulness.

Knowing that a request to Division HQ for 5" fire on some Japanese Tankettes approching Hill 112 on Iwo Jima dosen't really tell the Intelligence people in the Home Islands very much, other than the USN had a surplus of DDs to do fire support missions, as they knew that already.
 
The code talkers were only in action late in the war, and as noted what they transmitted was very short-lived tactical messages. Suppose the Japanese managed to scrape up someone who spoke Navajo - say, a returned immigrant who had lived in the Four Corners area. Then he has to teach Navajo to other Japanese, and then... they have to learn how to read the code talkers' messages, which besides being in Navajo used a lot of code words. It wouldn't be that hard to "break" that code...

But also, any Japanese in position to listen to American tactical radio chatter was probably on an island the US was taking, meaning soon to be dead. So it just doesn't seem practical.
 
Last edited:
In the Great War US National Guard regiments used some native American speakers for tactical message security. Choctaw or Cherokee I belive. Some north Italian divisions used obscure local dialects. Friulian may have been one, to befuddle Brit evesdroping.

The others are correct here. Penetration of tactical communications has to be exploited with extreme rapidity.
 
Top