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Q. Which side had the better network of spies during the US War of Independence, the Americans or the British?A. Americans won the war despite having an intelligence service that was almost always markedly inferior to the British. The British always had plenty of moles—loyalists by ideology or from pecuniary motive—within and outside George Washington's headquarters. Washington had no such advantage, being forced to rely for the most part on what sympathetic civilians could observe from outside the British camps."However, the Culper Spy Ring achieved more than any other American or British intelligence network during the war. Information collected concerned key British troop movements, fortifications and plans in New York and the surrounding region. Greatest achievement when it uncovered British plans to ambush the newly arrived French army in Rhode Island. Without spy ring’s warnings, Franco-American alliance may well have been damaged or destroyed.Spies and Scouts, Secret Writing, and Sympathetic CitizensTHE CULPER SPY RING (history.com)5 Patriot Spies of the American RevolutionIntelligence in the American Revolutionary War - WikipediaThe Letter That Won the American Revolution (NatGeo)Charles Cornwallis and his men surrender at Yorktown.Spies and Scouts, Secret Writing, and Sympathetic Citizensby Ed CrewsDrink and discretion mix badly when secrets of war are at stake. A British officer accepts a glass from a bartender eager to extract intelligence for the patriot cause. Interpreter Robin Reed is the officer, Bill Rose the colonial agent.Methods of eighteenth-century trade craft. In July 1777, British General William Howe sent a message, top, rolled up and inserted in the quill of a large feather, to General John Burgoyne. He would invade Pennsylvania, he wrote, rather than meet up with Burgoyne in New York.Henry Clinton to John BurgoyneView detail.Clements Library,University of MichiganA simple method of secret writing that the Americans never caught on to. An apparently unexceptional letter from General Henry Clinton contained a secret message hidden in plain sight.Clements Library,University of MichiganWhen a mask, usually posted by separate mailing, was placed over the letter, the self-contained section with the covert message was revealed.Clements Library,University of MichiganThe intended message, in which Clinton regrets not being able to persuade Howe to move up to New York instead of Pennsylvania: "Sr W's move just at this time / the worst he could take."Clements Library,University of MichiganUnited States intelligence operatives are engaged around the globe in the contest with terrorism. Others are focused on postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. Covert activities have not been undertaken on so grand a scale since World War II.Some of these secret struggles have become public knowledge. Television viewers and newspaper readers have details of the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, unconnected dots before the September 11, 2001, attacks, the capture of Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda leaders, and the ambush and killing of Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay.In the string of news images, one in particular is rich in historical significance, a reminder that the American clandestine tradition is more than two centuries old. During early fighting with the Taliban, an official photograph showed American special operations soldiers riding into battle on horseback. The picture revealed the austere military environment in Afghanistan. It also provided a link to the secret side of the Revolutionary War. America's first elite, clandestine unit—Knowlton's Rangers—undertook missions for George Washington. The men photographed in Afghanistan, as well as the Army Rangers, Special Forces, Delta Force, and army intelligence, trace their origins to Knowlton's command.Thomas Knowlton's statue in Connecticut. Hale belonged to Knowlton's Rangers, which were used by Washington for spying and special operations.Washington's Rangers are part of the larger story of intelligence operations in the War for Independence. They spanned North America, the Atlantic, Great Britain, and Europe. Engaged in the undercover war were such revolutionaries as Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Washington.These men, other American leaders, their British opponents, and French allies understood that victory hinged on sound political and military intelligence. To get it, they used espionage, counterespionage, diplomatic sleight-of-hand, propaganda, scouting, partisan warfare, code making, code breaking, sabotage, bribery, deception, and disinformation.Beginning to end, secret activities shaped the Revolution's course. British generals moved on Concord in 1775 because spies told them munitions were there. Colonial agents informed the Americans of the British plans to capture the arms and frustrated the effort. Through deception, Washington fooled the British in 1781 into thinking a Franco-American assault on New York was pending. While the British strengthened positions there and waited for an attack that never came, Washington and the Marquis de Rochambeau slipped away to Virginia, where they defeated Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.The methods spies use have not changed much in two centuries. Keith D. Dickson, professor of military studies at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, says: "With the exception of technology, there are no differences. Everything familiar to intelligence professionals today was seen in the eighteenth century—double agents, secret writing, dead drops, clandestine meetings, codes, and signals."These techniques were used in the 1700s for the same reasons they are today, Dickson said. Agents sought, and still seek, tactical information—troop movements, enemy intentions, and battle plans—and such strategic information as the goals and objectives of national leaders, their plans and policy decisions. A former intelligence officer who recently returned from military duty in Iraq as a colonel, Dickson uses Revolutionary War examples to teach strategy and related subjects to American officers.Dickson says that then, as now, much intelligence came from nonsecret sources. "Both British and American forces depended heavily on local sources of information to gain a better picture of the enemy. Although we usually think of intelligence in terms of spies and espionage activities, most information of value to military operations during the Revolution came from what we now call open-source material: newspapers, rumors, gossip, quizzing casual observers or passers-by." These days Central Intelligence Agency analysts scan CNN and the New York Times for information.In the 1700s, no nation had highly structured, professional intelligence organizations comparable to modern ones, according to Christopher Andrew's book Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community. Spy agencies now are permanent, often large bureaucracies. They employ well-trained career officers who collect or analyze information. This institutionalized approach to secret operations began in the late nineteenth century but did not take fully its current form until the twentieth.In the 1770s, intelligence work was more ad hoc. Great Britain had a tradition of successful—but sporadic—intelligence work beginning with the Tudors, but no permanent secret service. Even code breaking was farmed out to contractors. Clandestine activity grew during crises, and all but disappeared in peacetime. William Eden, undersecretary of state, oversaw England's spy networks in Europe during the Revolution. His budget was large, £115,900 in 1775. It reached £200,000 within three years. The sums hint at the scope of Eden's system. They also reflect the British belief in the power of bribery, used frequently and effectively, as in the case of Benedict Arnold.The American revolutionaries had fewer funds and no clandestine tradition, a severe disadvantage, according to Edward Lengel. He's a military historian and associate editor of the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia and has written a military biography, General George Washington and the Birth of the American Republic, slated for publication in 2004 by Random House."The Americans won the war despite having an intelligence service that was almost always markedly inferior to the British. The British always had plenty of moles—loyalists by ideology or from pecuniary motive—within and outside George Washington's headquarters. Washington had no such advantage, being forced to rely for the most part on what sympathetic civilians could observe from outside the British camps."The Continental Congress created groups to pursue covert enterprises. The Secret Committee, for instance, sought military information and aid. The Committee of Correspondence engaged in secret activities abroad. The Committee on Spies dealt with counterintelligence. They attracted such congressional talents as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Harrison.But the most difficult and sustained efforts were made by the Continental leaders closest to the military and diplomatic action. In 1997, the Central Intelligence Agency honored three patriots as the Founding Fathers of American intelligence: Franklin for covert action, Jay for counterintelligence, and Washington for acquisition of foreign intelligence.Of the three, Franklin had the most experience in foreign intrigue. He had represented Georgia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania in London before the war. There he apparently learned much. Congress acknowledged Franklin's wisdom and experience when it sent him to France in 1776. He worked in Paris to secure military aid, recognition of the American cause, and an alliance.His diplomacy was overt and covert. He waged a public relations campaign, secured secret aid, played a role in privateering expeditions, and churned out effective and inflammatory propaganda. One coup involved distributing bogus newspaper reports of outrages committed by England's Indian allies on the frontier. Opposition members in Parliament were duped and used the material to attack the government.Franklin's success can be measured partially by the anxiety his mission created in England. The British ambassador to Paris called him a "veteran of mischief." Franklin knew he was the object of "violent curiosities." He did all he could to keep the enemy on edge while he parried with spies curious about him.Dickson says, "Franklin had a network of agents and friends in France who provided him excellent information on British naval force movements. On the other hand, Franklin's secretary in Paris, Edward Bancroft, was a British agent. He sent vital information written on paper in invisible ink sealed in little bottles dropped in a location for pickup by the British spymaster Paul Wentworth, who ran a very effective espionage network in Paris targeting American-French activities. Luckily for America, George III discounted most of what Bancroft provided. Franklin suspected a compromise and often sent false information out to trap the mole, but Bancroft was never discovered. Not until after his death was he discovered to be a traitor."The French also spied on Franklin, tracking his movements as well as the movements of the British agents tracking him. In late eighteenth-century France, the government kept a sharp eye on many people—Frenchmen as well as foreigners. French agents collected diplomatic information, street gossip, and pillow talk. As a saying of the time put it: "When two Parisians talk, a third listens."Franklin's finest achievement in duplicity came in the wake of the American victory at Saratoga. The British hoped the outcome might provide an avenue for reconciliation. The French feared it would. Franklin approached the British, pretending to open a dialog. The French found out—as Franklin anticipated—and rushed into an alliance with America, hoping to forestall a settlement.Jay's wartime experience in secret service was less glamorous. There are few jobs in intelligence more tedious, anxious, or disheartening than catching spies. Jay brought to the work intellect, energy, and patriotic spirit. From summer 1776 to winter 1777, he oversaw the activities of a New York legislative committee charged with "detecting and defeating conspiracies." The conspiracies largely were British attempts to use Tories to control New York City. Jay's committee made arrests, conducted trials, and used agents to gather information. After the war, Jay became chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He also helped argue the case for approval of the federal Constitution by the states as co-author of The Federalist Papers with James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. In one piece, Jay argued that the executive branch needed the authority to conduct intelligence operations.Washington's intelligence performance had the greatest immediate impact on Continental Army operations. Although he gained military experience in the French and Indian War, nothing had prepared him to be a spymaster, but Lengel says Washington was deeply interested in secret activities, and enjoyed dealing with agents."Washington was a devoted amateur," Lengel said. "He valued intelligence and used it reasonably effectively. He was also discriminating and dismissed bad intelligence more often than not. But he was still an amateur, and no match for British professionals."Washington used scouts extensively, showed a flair for disinformation and deception, and looked for turncoats in the enemy ranks.Lengel said Washington was not above seeking traitors in the British army, especially Hessian officers, despite his moral outrage over Arnold's defection; he was just less successful.Washington's greatest intelligence failure involved Nathan Hale. Desperate for information in September 1776 about developments behind British lines, Washington sent Hale through them as a spy. Hale had no tradecraft and a tissue-thin cover. A manuscript found in 2003 at the Library of Congress revealed that a loyalist agent easily duped Hale into revealing his mission. Hale's arrest and execution followed quickly."He's still a hero," James Hutson, chief of the library's manuscript division, said late last year to reporters. "He was a brave guy who volunteered for a mission that no one else wanted to take. He was just not well-trained and didn't know quite what to do."Nathan Hale's statue outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.The CIA displays a statue of Hale at its Langley, Virginia, headquarters.Washington had espionage and counterespionage achievements. He ran agents and networks in Philadelphia and New York. He uncovered the treachery of Benjamin Church, Continental Army medical chief, who served as a British spy. In 1776, Washington's spy John Honeyman accurately described the laxity of Hessian troops in Trenton, New Jersey, then returned and persuaded the Hessians that the Americans would not attack. The result was Washington's victory after crossing the Delaware River at night.The capture of the British spy Major John Andre foiled Benedict Arnold's plot to betray West Point. Condemned to death, Andre went bravely to the gallows. Washington rejected pleas for clemency—some from his own officers—but not without regret.John André was tried by an ad hoc commission of Continental generals.Washington's understanding of the need for sound military intelligence is reflected in a letter he wrote to a confidant in 1777. His words still have a sense of immediacy and relevancy:The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent & need not be further urged—All that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, Success depends in Most Enterprises of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned & promising a favorable issue.Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War - WikipediaIntelligence in the American Revolutionary War was essentially monitored and sanctioned by the Continental Congress to provide military intelligence to the Continental Army to aid them in fighting the British during the American Revolutionary War. Congress created a Secret Committee for domestic intelligence, a Committee of Secret Correspondence for foreign intelligence, and a committee on spies, for tracking spies within the Patriot movement.Intelligence operations in the American Revolutionary War - WikipediaThe American War of Independence: The Rebels and the Redcoats (bbc.co.uk)Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War - WikipediaBY EVAN ANDREWS // OCTOBER 20, 2015Patrick HenryWho were the Sons of Liberty, and what roles did they play in igniting and organizing a revolution?During the American Revolution, the fledgling Continental Army employed a sophisticated network of spies, double agents and secret informants to gain the upper hand on the British. Espionage duty was notoriously hazardous work—operatives faced the gallows if caught—but that didn’t stop dozens of intrepid volunteers from collecting intelligence and undertaking covert missions behind enemy lines. From a doomed Patriot to an officer who spied on the British in plain sight, get the facts on five of the American Revolution’s most legendary secret agents.Nathan Hale“Last Words of Nathan Hale,” stipple engraving by Scottish artist Alexander Hay Ritchie. (Credit: Yale University Art Gallery)Often dubbed “America’s first spy,” Nathan Hale was a Yale graduate who served in Knowlton’s Rangers, a short-lived Continental reconnaissance unit. When General George Washington’s forces became bottled up on Manhattan Island in September 1776, Hale volunteered for a mission to gather much-needed intelligence behind enemy lines. He was ferried across the Long Island Sound on September 16, slipped into the occupied town of Huntington and began surveying British fortifications and encampments while posing as a schoolmaster.Hale was undoubtedly courageous, but according to most historians, he wasn’t a very skilled intelligence officer. It only took a few days before his suspicious questions drew attention from loyalist locals, and he later blew his cover after a British agent approached him in a tavern and pretended to be a fellow Patriot spy. Hale was arrested the next day and discovered to have incriminating documents concealed beneath the soles of his shoes. Charged as an illegal combatant, he was executed by hanging on the morning of September 22. According to legend, the 21-year-old patriot faced the gallows with “gentle dignity” before uttering the famous words, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”James ArmisteadJames Armistead Lafayette (R) at Yorktown, standing with Marquis de La Fayette (L).During the Yorktown campaign, the Marquis de Lafayette found an unlikely secret agent in James Armistead, a black slave who got his master’s permission to assist the Continental Army. The Virginia-born bondsman began his service by transporting dispatches and intelligence reports across enemy lines. He then graduated to full-blown espionage in the summer of 1781, when he infiltrated Charles Cornwallis’s camp by posing as a runaway slave loyal to the British. He proved so convincing in the undercover role, that Cornwallis eventually enlisted him to work as a British spy. Armistead agreed and immediately began funneling the Redcoats phony information supplied by Lafayette, including a fraudulent report that referenced nonexistent units of Continental troops. He also kept his ears open for any word of enemy movements. In July 1781, he was one of the first sources to inform Lafayette that the British were marshaling their forces at Yorktown.Despite having risked his life for his country’s freedom, Armistead was sent back to his master after the war and held as a slave for several more years. He finally won his release papers in 1787, thanks in part to Lafayette, who wrote a letter to the Virginia legislature on his behalf. As a sign of his gratitude to his former commander, Armistead later changed his name to James Armistead Lafayette.Benjamin Tallmadge and the Culper RingBenjamin Tallmadge, member of the United States House of Representatives and spymaster for George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. (Credit: Universal Images Group/Getty Images)Serving with distinction at the Battles of White Plains, Brandywine, and Germantown, Continental dragoon Benjamin Tallmadge was also the mastermind behind the Culper Spy Ring, one of the most effective espionage networks of the American Revolution. The New York native first organized the cabal in late-1778 at the behest of General George Washington. Operating under the pseudonym John Bolton, he recruited childhood friend Abraham Woodhull and several other acquaintances to provide intelligence from in and around British-controlled Long Island. Tallmadge instructed his operatives to communicate via a complex system of dead drops and coded messages. He even had them write some of their reports in invisible ink that could only be read after being brushed with a chemical compound. Once smuggled out of the city, the documents would be ferried to Tallmadge’s coastal Connecticut headquarters by a fleet of whaleboats operated by an agent named Caleb Brewster.Despite operating from the heart of enemy territory, Tallmadge’s Culper Ring managed to gather intelligence for some five years without losing a single agent to the British. One of their most significant achievements came during the summer of 1780, when they informed Washington of a British plan to ambush French forces gathered at Newport, Rhode Island.Enoch CrosbyFrench map of the Hudson River Valley and surrounding area, New York, 1778. (Credit: Buyenlarge/Getty Images)Enoch Crosby’s spy career began with a simple case of mistaken identity. In 1776, the Connecticut-born shoemaker was making his way to a Continental Army camp in New York when he was confused for a British sympathizer and invited to a meeting of loyalist militiamen. Crosby played along and later reported what he learned to Patriot leader John Jay, who seized the opportunity to recruit him as one of the nation’s first counterintelligence operatives. The job required Crosby to work deep undercover. To help sell his new identity, his handlers arranged for him to be arrested as a loyalist before staging his escape to the Hudson River Valley. Crosby then reunited with the British sympathizers and began reporting on their movements. Thanks to the intelligence he gathered, the entire gang was rounded up in a Continental raid a few days later.In the months that followed, Crosby infiltrated British loyalist groups on at least four more occasions. Each time he would be “arrested” along with his hapless co-conspirators, only to later escape and return to the field to start the whole process over again. The young spy carried a special pass that would identify him as an American agent in a pinch—he once had to use it to avoid being picked up by Continental sentries—but outside of Jay and a few others, no one knew he was actually working for the colonials. Before he was finally discharged and hailed as a hero in 1777, even Crosby’s own parents believed their son was a traitor to the Patriot cause.Lewis CostiginBritish-Hessian troops under the command of General Howe parading through New York as they took over the city during the American War of Independence. (Credit: MPI/Getty Images)Not only did Lieutenant Lewis Costigin supply valuable intelligence from behind British lines, he did it while openly wearing a Continental Army uniform. His bizarre career in espionage began in early 1777, when George Washington sent him to New Brunswick, New Jersey to report on British movements after the Battle of Trenton. Costigin was promptly captured, but he was wearing enough of a uniform at the time to be classified as a soldier rather than a spy, thereby avoiding the noose. After shipping him to New York City as a prisoner of war, the British placed him on parole and allowed him to wander the city freely on a pledge that he wouldn’t take up arms or communicate with his superiors.Costigin was exchanged for a British officer in September 1778, but rather than return to his unit, he remained in occupied New York and began collecting intelligence for the Continentals—which he was now legally free to do under the terms of his parole. Luckily for Costigin, the British had grown so used to seeing him around town they no longer viewed him as a threat. Though still clad in an enemy uniform, he was able to openly roam the streets gathering information on everything from troop movements to military shipping and British army rations, all of which he reported to Washington in dispatches written under the pseudonym “Z.” By the time Costigin finally left New York in January 1779, he had spent some four months spying on the British in plain sight.Revolutionary War, Espionage and Intelligence█ ADRIENNE WILMOTH LERNERThe American Revolution officially began with the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. However, the conflict between Britain and the American colonies escalated to full-scale war from several orchestrated acts of subversion against British authority. High taxation, shipping restrictions, controls on employment and land ownership, as well as lack of representation in British government prompted resistance to British laws by American colonial citizens. The first shots of the Revolution are said to be those that occurred during the Boston Massacre, the British armed retribution for acts of sabotage against British interests, including the events of the Boston Tea Party. The conflict ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, granting international recognition for the newly independent United States. The Revolution marked the beginning of a new era in international politics, shifting the world balance of power and military might over the next 230 years.Formation of the United States Intelligence CommunityAt the outbreak of war, the fledgling American government had few resources, and was still divided by the competing interests of rival colonies. Many leaders were suspicious of establishing permanent, national militaries. The American colonies had to recruit volunteers, train, and arm soldiers, a daunting task for the new nation. Colonial militias aided in training soldiers, and at the outbreak of the war, American military command decided to use their more limited forces in guerilla attacks against the stronger, more formalized British army.In addition to troop strength and weaponry, the British had the significant advantage of having a developed strategic intelligence force within its military corps. The British established a network of Loyalist spies and informants, many of whom were able to infiltrate and report on American military formation, tactics, battle plans, and defensive positions. This espionage gave Britain a decided upper hand in the early months of the conflict, with devastating effect on the American armies.Statue of Nathan Hale, revolutionary soldier captured and hung by the British for espionage, in front of Tribune Tower, in Chicago, Illinois.SANDY FELSENTHAL/CORBISBefore the outbreak of the Revolution, the American colonial government, the Continental Congress, created the Committee of Correspondence in 1775. The purpose of the committee was to establish foreign alliances and gain the aid of foreign intelligence resources. The original intent of the committee was to facilitate the sharing of information about British colonial policy, but at the start of the Revolution, the Committee seized and combed mail for vital intelligence information. The organization was renamed the Committee of Secret Correspondence, and then the Committee of Foreign Affairs, and employed trusted Patriot sympathizers in Britain to feed American leaders intelligence information. After establishing protocol for obtaining information, the committee established a network of couriers to disperse information to battlefield commanders and key government officials. The committee also sought the aid of French forces in the war effort.The Second Continental Congress also established the Secret Committee. This clandestine committee arranged for American privateers to purchase and smuggle arms to the United States. The committee used large sums of money to pay for weapons, and additionally solicited aid from Britain's numerous European rivals. The world of the Secret Committee began in 1775, amassing weapons while still under British rule. After the Declaration of Independence was signed, the committee burned its papers and transaction ledgers to protect their contacts in case the colonies lost their bid for sovereignty.The smuggling of weapons proved a successful venture. The United States armed its troops within months, although supplies remained limited throughout the course of the war. Many American leaders, including Thomas Jefferson, ran successful privateering ventures, using their wealth and diplomatic contacts abroad to smuggle arms for the war effort. American privateers ran their illegal cargo through the British blockade under the guise of foreign named vessels and foreign flags. Patriot spies also learned the new British semaphore code, enabling blockade runners to falsely identify themselves as British ships.The first United States counterintelligence operations were directed by the Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies. The commission endowed several groups, mostly in New York and Philadelphia, with the task of apprehending British spies. The organization was the nation's first secret service, employing local militia under its command to help ferret out suspected traitors and enemy spies. The group used the criteria defined by the Committee on Spies when identifying, trying, and sentencing suspects. The rules of the committee, incorporated into the Articles of War in 1776, defined the crimes of treason and espionage during the course of war, and shaped the American intelligence community with its strict definitions of intelligence information, espionage acts, conspiracy, and aiding the enemy.EspionageAlthough the secret committees of the Second Continental Congress were the first national organizations to address intelligence issues, individuals and civilian spy networks carried out the most vital American intelligence operations of the Revolutionary War.Robert Townsend used his position as a prominent merchant in British-occupied New York to gather intelligence information on behalf of the American government. Townsend operated a significant spy ring, known as the Culper Ring. The ring employed both men and women, and based its operations in New York and Long Island. Most members of the espionage group used their professions as cover, relying on customers and patrons from the British military to divulge information about British military operations voluntarily. Several member of the Culper Ring were caught by British occupation authorities, but the ring never stopped feeding information to American authorities during the war.Major John Clark established and administered a similar espionage group in Philadelphia. Clark and his group fed General George Washington critical information and supplies while his troops wintered at Valley Forge. The Clark Ring obtained detailed information about British defenses , supply lines, and battle plans, allowing the American Patriot forces to plan a series of successful surprise attacks, breaking the British stronghold in the region and paving the way to seize control of Philadelphia.Several other Patriot civilian espionage rings operated across the country and in Britain. Individual civilians most often contributed to counterintelligence measures by posing as Loyalists and infiltrating British-sympathizing groups. Enoch Crosby and John Honeyman both infiltrated several pro-British organizations and delivered valuable intelligence information about the planned use of Hessian mercenaries in British military operations.Within the military, espionage operations were often tailored to fit the strategic needs of the battlefield. Scouts, many of whom were American Indians, reported on the location and strength of British military instillations and encampments. The first recorded American military agent of espionage was Nathan Hale. After a crushing defeat at the Battle of Long Island, Washington called for a volunteer to spy on the British and report to the American command with details of future battle plans. Hale volunteered, but was later captured behind enemy lines and hanged.Despite objections from some of his own officers, Washington sent British spy Major John Andre to the gallows in 1780.Covert actions and special operations. Most American, government-backed espionage actions against the British were covert, strategic operations of deception or sabotage. Blockade running was of critical importance to the American war effort. Though British ships clogged United States harbors, American privateers successfully ran British blockades to provide troops with supplies, ammunition, and even supporting troops from France.The American government, usually through diplomats abroad, employed a number of agents to sabotage wartime industries in Britain. Munitions factories, shipyards, and weapons storage facilities were the main targets of Patriot sabotage. Twelve separate targets were attacked in London and Portsmouth in a three-year period by one American saboteur before the agent fell into British custody and was executed.Some operations of deception were more insidious. British troops, wanting to keep some local Indian populations from joining the American cause, bribed village leaders with gifts of blankets and jewelry. Earlier, they gave the Indians blankets from their military sick wards, often infected with smallpox. The disease continued to devastate the American Indian population during the course of the war. Both British and American military personnel traded contaminated goods through Indian trade networks, hoping the goods would fall into enemy hands.Codes, cryptology, and secret writing. American and British forces employed codes and ciphers to disguise their communications, and took precautionary measures to ensure that crucial messages were not intercepted by the enemy. Both armies employed replacement codes, where pre-set letters or words replaced other letters or words in communications. This required intense memorization of static codes, or the use of codebooks, which had a high risk of being stolen by rival spies. The codes used in the American Revolution were simple and easy to decipher, permitting both armies to read intercepts with relative ease. In 1777, the Americans unveiled a new mathematical code that remained unbroken throughout the war, but the complexity of the code precluded its daily use and limited its effectiveness to overseas diplomatic dispatches that did not have to be deciphered in a timely manner.In lieu of complex codes, American cryptologists developed and used secret writing techniques. Disappearing inks are an ancient espionage trick, but during the Revolution, American scientists developed several inks that needed a series of reagents to reveal the hidden message. Some of these inks were waterproof and held up for months in difficult conditions, a necessity for warfare across wild and vast terrain. To further disguise messages, agents were instructed to write their communications between the lines of common publications, such as pamphlets and almanacs.Intelligence operations abroad and at sea required further technological advances in espionage tradecraft. With the British blockade, American agents had to be ready to conceal or destroy intelligence information that they carried. To preserve and conceal information, agents developed small, silver containers in which information could be hidden. The container could then be thrown into the fire and melted or be swallowed by the agent, permitting to information to possibly remain intact and undetected.After the end of the Revolution, and the establishment of an independent United States government, most military and espionage institutions were dissolved. Until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, American intelligence agencies and services were exclusively wartime organizations, rapidly assembled in times of conflict, and dissolved in times of peace. Though intelligence operations certainly aided the victory of American forces over the larger and better-armed British military, peacetime intelligence remained scattered, and largely focused on political and diplomatic espionage operations.American Spies of the RevolutionMount VernonNathan HaleDuring the Battle of Long Island, Nathan Hale--a captain in the Continental Army--volunteered to go behind enemy lines in disguise to report back on British troop movements. Hale was captured by the British army and executed as a spy on September 22, 1776. Hale remains part of popular lore connected with the American Revolution for his purported last words, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country."Benjamin TallmadgeBenjamin Tallmadge oversaw the Culper Spy Ring operating out of New York (Litchfield Historical Society)In November 1778, George Washington charged Major Benjamin Tallmadge with creating a spy ring in New York City, the site of British headquarters. Tallmadge led the creation of the Culper Spy Ring, recruiting friends to work as his informants. Tallmadge served as the main handler for the Culper Spy Ring until the end of the war.Learn More: The Culper Spy RingAustin RoeA tavern owner, Austin Roe was closely tied to other members of the Culper Ring, even growing up near the home of fellow spy Caleb Brewster. Roe served as the group’s courier, transporting materials from Robert Townsend’s New York City coffee shop all the way back to Setauket, Long Island, a trip of more than fifty miles. Roe’s position as courier was fraught with danger, traveling a long distance with the possibility of being caught with incriminating evidence of his activities.Jamie Bell plays the part of Abraham Woodhull in AMC’s new series Turn (AMC)Abraham WoodhullA farmer and the son of a local Patriot judge, Abraham Woodhull joined the Culper ring in November of 1778. Woodhull was essentially the leader of the Culper Spy Ring, deciding what information was transmitted throughout the group, which would eventually make its way to George Washington. In order to evade British detection, Woodhull operated under the pseudonym, “Samuel Culper Sr."Anna StrongWell-connected within the New York, colonial, upper class, Anna Strong utilized her farmstead on Long Island to help transfer intelligence information to the other members of the Culper ring. Strong’s husband, Selah Strong III, was a prominent Patriot judge who served as a captain during the war. Anna Strong arranged clothes on her clothesline as a means to signal fellow Culper spy Caleb Brewster regarding the location of hidden documents to be transported.Robert TownsendA tavern owner in New York City, Robert Townsend participated in a complex cover up to mask his true loyalties. Townsend was a Patriot who publicly presented himself as a Loyalist supporter of Britain, even writing for a Loyalist newspaper to build credibility. The guise worked as Townsend was trusted with sensitive information, even from British military officers. Townsend then relayed the information to Austin Roe.Marquis de Lafayette's original certificate commending James Armistead Lafayette for his revolutionary war service (Marquis de Lafayette Collections, Skillman Library, Lafayette College)James Armistead LafayetteAn enslaved African-American who volunteered to join the army under Lafayette in 1781, Armistead served as a double agent working for the Patriots. Armistead posed as a runaway slave who agreed to work with the British, though in actuality he was collecting intelligence from the British and reporting back to Patriot forces. Armistead spied on Brigadier General Benedict Arnold (who had already defected to lead British forces), and eventually visited the camp of Lord Cornwallis to gather information about the British plans for troop deployment and armaments. The intelligence reports from Armistead’s efforts were instrumental in helping to defeat the British during the Battle of Yorktown.Primary Source: Lafayette's Testimonial to James Armistead Lafayette (November 21, 1784 )Ann BatesA Philadelphia school teacher and the wife of a British soldier, Ann Bates claimed to be a Patriot in order to collect and identify important information to send to British forces. After walking into George Washington’s White Plains headquarters, Bates explained that she “had the opportunity of going through their whole army remarking at the same time the strength and situation of each brigade, and the number of cannon, with their situation and weight of ball each cannon was charged with.” Bates’ information influenced General Henry Clinton's decision to send more forces to defend Rhode Island, leading to American and French armies to withdraw from Newport.THE CULPER SPY RING (history.com)British forces occupied New York in August 1776, and the city would remain a British stronghold and a major naval base for the duration of the Revolutionary War. Though getting information from New York on British troop movements and other plans was critical to General George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, there was simply no reliable intelligence network that existed on the Patriot side at that time. That changed in 1778, when a young cavalry officer named Benjamin Tallmadge established a small group of trustworthy men and women from his hometown of Setauket, Long Island. Known as the Culper Spy Ring, Tallmadge’s homegrown network would become the most effective of any intelligence-gathering operation on either side during the Revolutionary War.George WashingtonSiege of YorktownBattles of Trenton and PrincetonTHE DANGERS OF SPYINGIn mid-September 1776, the American officer Nathan Hale was hanged without trial in New York City. British authorities had caught Hale when he was on his way back to his regiment after having penetrated the British lines to gather information. Hale’s death illustrated the grave dangers inherent in spying for the rebels during the Revolutionary War, especially in the British stronghold of New York. Meanwhile, Benjamin Tallmadge, a young cavalry officer from Setauket, had enlisted in the Continental Army when the American Revolution began in 1775 and was soon awarded the rank of major. In mid-1778, General George Washington appointed Tallmadge the head of the Continental Army’s secret service; he was charged with establishing a permanent spy network that would operate behind enemy lines on Long Island.In addition to serving as head of Washington's secret service, Major Benjamin Tallmadge participated in many major battles fought by the Continental Army in the northern states. Fellow spy Caleb Brewster served under Tallmadge in the capture of Fort St. George at Mastic, New York in November 1780.Tallmadge recruited only those whom he could absolutely trust, beginning with his childhood friend, the farmer Abraham Woodhull, and Caleb Brewster, whose main task during the Revolution was commanding a fleet of whaleboats against British and Tory shipping on Long Island Sound. Brewster, one of the most daring of the group, was also the only member whom the British had definitely identified as a spy. Tallmadge went by the code name John Bolton, while Woodhull went by the name of Samuel Culper.WORKINGS OF THE CUPLER SPY RINGWoodhull, who began running the group’s day-to-day operations on Long Island, also personally traveled back and forth to New York collecting information and observing naval maneuvers there. He would evaluate reports and determine what information would be taken to Washington. Dispatches would then be given to Brewster, who would carry them across the Sound to Fairfield, Connecticut, and Tallmadge would then pass them on to Washington. Woodhull lived in constant anxiety of being discovered, and by the summer of 1779 he had recruited another man, the well-connected New York merchant Robert Townsend, to serve as the ring’s primary source in the city. Townsend wrote his reports as “Samuel Culper, Jr.” and Woodhull went by “Samuel Culper, Sr.”Austin Roe, a tavernkeeper in Setauket who acted as a courier for the Culper ring traveled to Manhattan with the excuse of buying supplies for his business. A local Setauket woman and Woodhull’s neighbor, Anna Smith Strong, was also said to have aided in the spy ring’s activities. Her husband, the local Patriot judge Selah Strong, had been confined on the British prison ship HMS Jersey in 1778, and Anna Strong lived alone for much of the war. She reportedly used the laundry on her clothesline to leave signals regarding Brewster’s location for meetings with Woodhull.ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE CULPER SPY RINGDespite some strained relations within the group and constant pressure from Washington to send more information, the Culper Spy Ring achieved more than any other American or British intelligence network during the war. The information collected and passed on by the ring from 1778 to war’s end in 1783 concerned key British troop movements, fortifications and plans in New York and the surrounding region. Perhaps the group’s greatest achievement came in 1780, when it uncovered British plans to ambush the newly arrived French army in Rhode Island. Without the spy ring’s warnings to Washington, the Franco-American alliance may well have been damaged or destroyed by this surprise attack.The Culper Spy Ring has also been credited with uncovering information involving the treasonous correspondence between Benedict Arnold and John Andre, chief intelligence officer under General Henry Clinton, commander of the British forces in New York, who were conspiring to give the British control over the army fort at West Point. Major Andre was captured and hung as a spy in October 1780, on Washington’s orders.The Letter That Won the American RevolutionGeorge Washington paid the new nation's first spies out of his own pocket. Here he studies a map with Nathan Hale, who volunteered to gather intelligence behind British lines. He was soon captured and hanged.PHOTOGRAPH BY HULTON ARCHIVE, GETTY IMAGESBy Nina Strochlic PUBLISHED JULY 3, 2017In 1777, the American colonies were badly losing their fight for independence from Great Britain. The British Army had captured New York City’s crucial port. Expecting further advances, the Continental Congress was evacuated from Philadelphia. It seemed that the war was lost. Then George Washington, then Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, wrote a letter that changed the course of the war.Washington was desperate to discover what was happening inside New York, but military scouts couldn’t get close enough. The general needed someone to penetrate enemy lines, but when he asked for volunteers, few of his troops raised their hands.“Spying wasn’t seen as gentlemanly,” says Vince Houghton, resident historian at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.George Washington dabbled in espionage when, as a 21-year-old, he spied on the French in the Ohio Territories. “One of the things he did particularly well was to exploit the social environment of drinking sessions and meals with French officers to acquire useful intelligence,” notes a CIA report.PHOTOGRAPH BY HULTON ARCHIVE, GETTY IMAGESFinally, a young army captain named Nathan Hale volunteered for the dangerous assignment. He was caught a week later and hanged, the first known American spy to be executed on the job. (He’s memorialized with a statue outside CIA headquarters.) Washington realized that the mission was too big for untrained volunteers, so he set about building an espionage organization.YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKEPresident George Washington: Calm, Cool, and Collected Commander in ChiefWhat a Toilet Shows About Life During the American RevolutionSee Nine Amazing Treasures from the Revolutionary WarJohn Jay, later the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, had been running counterintelligence as head of the New York State Committee and Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies. One of Jay’s operatives, a merchant named Nathaniel Sackett, had experience in secret writing and codes. In February 1777, Washington wrote a letter to Sackett in which he offered him $50 a month—out of his own pocket—to establish the first formal apparatus for the “advantage of obtaining the earliest and best Intelligence of the designs of the Enemy.”Washington's letter created America's first intelligence gathering operation. “He wasn’t a military genius,” says one historian of Washington. “What made him good was putting the right people in the right positions.”PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM“Without the organization that Sackett set up, it would have been very difficult for us to win the war,” says Houghton. “We had a ragtag army and [the British] had the greatest army, greatest navy, and greatest economy in the world. We had no real business winning this war.”But America’s spy service got off to an inglorious start. Most of Sackett’s agents failed at their jobs—including Sackett himself, who was fired after just six months. Fortunately for the infant nation, Sackett’s replacement, 26-year-old Benjamin Tallmadge, created what is considered one of America’s greatest espionage operations: the Culper Spy Ring. Comprised of childhood friends from Long Island, the group included a shop owner inside New York City who gathered information, a traveling trader who smuggled it out of the city, and a whale boat captain who delivered it to Washington’s camp.Benjamin Tallmadge took over the role of spymaster for George Washington during the war. Later, he served eight terms in the House of Representatives.PHOTOGRAPH BY UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE, GETTY IMAGESEmploying the tools and tricks of the 18th-century spy trade—hiding secret messages in hollow feather quills, using “dead drops” to transport letters—the Culper operatives unmasked enemy spies, busted a money counterfeiting plan, and stopped the British from sabotaging a French aid mission to the colonies.After important letters were lost during an enemy raid, Tallmadge invented a “numerical dictionary” code that matched 763 cities, names, and words to numbers. (Washington’s code name was Agent 711.) Washington also asked physician James Jay (brother to John) to invent an invisible ink that could be revealed only with another chemical and would “relieve the fears of such persons as may be entrusted in its conveyance.”Washington’s espionage experiment paid off. In 1781 the British surrendered, thanks in part to the intelligence gathered by the Culper Ring and their networks. “Washington didn’t really out-fight the British. He simply out-spied us,” a British intelligence officer allegedly said after the war. None of the Culper spies were ever caught, and even Washington himself never learned exactly who was in the group. The ring’s very existence wasn’t discovered until the 1900s, and to this day no one knows for certain how many members it had.After the war Washington asked Congress to reimburse him $17,000—nearly half a million dollars today—for his espionage expenses. The lawmakers obliged.Washington’s letter establishing the first American espionage operation was passed down from owner to owner until 2003, when it found a home at the International Spy Museum.PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUMLearn to decipher the CUPID code."The Cupid Code" is taken from Colonial Williamsburg's Electronic Field Trip In the General's Secret Service, which will be broadcast during the 2004 - 2005 Electronic Field Trip series. For more information on registering your classroom for the live broadcast and interactive activities of this exciting interactive educational resource, visit Electronic Field Trips.View Quicktime video clips from In the General's Secret Service Electronic Field TripEd Crews contributed to the spring 2004 journal a story on colonial roads. Crews says readers interested in Revolutionary intelligence operations might review the relevant chapters in Spying for America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence, by Nathan Miller, as well as Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage, and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA, by G. J. A. O'Toole.

Something that needs to be said… about India gaining its IndependenceThis is about the real reason why the British left India… which most Indians (except a few) are completely unaware of. Recently, with the decline in the political fortunes of India's Congress party and its gradual minimization in the Indian political landscape, voices that were earlier silenced, are resurging with the narrative which I shall present in this post.Disclaimer: This post is not about disrespecting Gandhi or disparaging his contribution to India's freedom struggle. His greatness as a pioneer and champion of the non-violence movement remains unquestioned, globally. The Civil Rights movement in the US drew inspiration from Gandhi's doctrine of non-violence. However, thrusting upon Gandhi, the credit for creating a situation that left the British with no option but to relinquish a 200 year old wealth generating colony - that is the historical wrong that needs to be put in perspective. That credit is due where it has never been officially acknowledged by any government in independent India. That is the tragedy this post wants to highlight.The largest democracy in the world was born when it won independence from the British in 1947. This is a picture of the man who is credited with that historic accomplishment. His revolution of non-violent resistance against the British became the ostentatious narrative for explaining to the world and to India's future generations as to why the British left India in such haste.Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the man credited with driving the British from IndiaFile photoNothing can be farther from the truth, and that truth needs to be told… if not now, then I know not when on the wheel of time would the opportune moment present itself.As is now becoming clear through discourses by intellectuals and journalists who have freed themselves of the Nehruvian narratives imposed by successive pro-Nehru governments, the British did secretly admit to an individual other than Gandhi as being the prime cause for Britain's hasty withdrawal from the South Asian subcontinent. That man is known by the name of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, the real reason for the British leaving India in 1947The False Narratives being taught to Generations of IndiansNetaji's life story is well known but with an ending that remains an unsolved mystery to date. I shall avoid repeating what is common knowledge.However, the army (comprising of Japanese POWs) founded by Netaji which came to be known as the Azad Hind Fauj or the Indian National Army (INA) was the first organized and militarily trained and armed resistance movement that challenged British rule in India. It was this nascent military force that would bring about the downfall of the Queen's Empire.After his meeting with Hitler and receiving Nazi Germany's assurances of whatever support they can provide for an armed resistance movement against the British, Netaji set up the Free India Centre in Berlin. At that center he founded Azad Hind Radio (as a part of Germany’s radio service), which first aired on 7 January, 1942."Standing at one of the crossroads of world history, I solemnly declare on behalf of all freedom-loving Indians in India and abroad, that we shall continue to fight British imperialism till India is once again the mistress of her own destiny," he said on 28 February 1942, declaring war against India’s long-time colonial rulers on air.This is where Subhash Chandra Bose differed ideologically from Gandhi.“Freedom” Netaji asserted, “is not given, it is taken”.Subhash Chandra Bose with the German armyAs World War 2 began to make its presence felt on the stage of global events in 1939, Gandhi pledged his unwavering support to the then British Viceroy in India, Linlithgow. That bonhomie however soured soon thereafter and Gandhi launched his Quit India movement on 9 August, 1942. That movement was effectively crushed by the British within no more than 3 weeks of its launch.The history that is taught to children in Indian schools glorifies Gandhi's 3 week long Quit India movement as the triggering event that caused the British to start packing up. That narrative, tenuous as it is, serves a lot of political purposes and so has been glorified beyond justifiable cause.Why the (extremely short-lived) Quit India movement had negligible impact on the British establishment and was not the real cause for driving out the British will become clear, when we get to Clement Attlee’s statement, a little later.There is also a popular narrative that the Quit India movement was the final straw that made the British realize how they can no longer sustain the cost of fighting Hitler and Gandhi's followers, both at the same time. History books in India argue that World War 2 had left the British economy so weak that they felt they could no longer administer India. This is another of those flimsy theories that do not hold up to factual evidence. Factual evidence shows that the British Economy was considerably weakened even after World War 1. The British used that pretext to impose heavy taxation on India, not only to cover Britain's war-time losses but also to fill up King George's treasure chest. Details can be found in an elaborate paper written by Sumit Sarkar in the International Encyclopedia of the First World War[1].The British, you have to remember, were not doing charity in India. They were robbing it.To argue therefore, that a post World War 2 England wanted to give up on its Indian colony because it was financially bankrupt... is either being naïve or being driven by a desire to cover up the real reason for retreating from the Indian Subcontinent.The real deathblow for the British was to come from an entirely unexpected quarter.The Red Fort TrialsBetween November 1945 and May 1946, the British initiated the court martial proceedings of a number of officers from Netaji's Indian National Army (INA) or the Azad Hind Fauj. According to the prevailing British military law, court martials were always conducted behind doors in closed premises. To send out a clear message to Indian officers and soldiers serving in the British army, the British decided to hold the proceedings in the open, at the Red Fort in Delhi.The Red Fort Trials, as they later came to be known became the public relations disaster that began the countdown for British departure from India.Of all the officers captured from the INA, 3 officers were particularly accused of the gravest of crimes - of "waging war against the King-Emperor" (the Indian Army Act, 1911 did not provide for a separate charge for treason). These 3 officers were Colonel Prem Sehgal, Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, and Major General Shah Nawaz Khan. The three had been officers in the British Indian Army and were taken as prisoners of war in Malaya, Singapore and Burma. They had, like a large number of other troops and officers of the British Indian Army, joined Netaji's Indian National Army and later fought in Imphal and Burma alongside the Japanese forces in allegiance to the Azad Hind Fauj.Widespread Mutiny within the British Indian Army, Navy and AirforceThe trio of officers known as Sehgal, Shah Nawaz and Dhillon had worked closely with Netaji and this fact endeared them to more and more Indians as the Red Fort Trials progressed.During the trial, mutiny broke out in the Royal Indian Navy, incorporating ships and shore establishments of the RIN throughout India from Karachi to Bombay and from Vizag to Calcutta. In February 1946, almost 20,000 sailors of the Royal Indian Navy serving on 78 ships mutinied against the Empire. They went around Mumbai with portraits of Netaji and forced the British to shout Jai Hind and other INA slogans. The rebels brought down the Union Jack on their ships and refused to obey their British masters. This mutiny was followed by similar rebellions in the Royal Indian Air Force and also in the British Indian Army units in across India.At some places, Non Commissioned Officers in the British Indian Army started ignoring orders from their British superiors. In Madras and Pune, the British garrisons had to face revolts within the ranks of the British Indian Army.Another Army mutiny took place at Jabalpur during the last week of February 1946, soon after the Navy mutiny at Bombay. This was suppressed by force, including the use of the bayonet by British troops. It lasted about two weeks. After the mutiny, about 45 persons were tried by court martial. 41 were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment or dismissal. In addition, a large number were discharged on administrative grounds. While the participants of the Naval Mutiny were given the freedom fighters' pension, the Jabalpur mutineers got nothing. They even lost their service pension.At that time there were only 40,000 British troops in India who were all weary and eager to go home. They were in no mood to fight 2.5 million battle hardened India soldiers who were getting increasingly disillusioned with their British commanders.In an interview with the British journalist Fransis Watson of the BBC in February 1955, this is how the father of the Indian Constitution, B. R. Ambedkar summed up the mood of the remaining British leadership in colonial India once the mutinies had erupted - "I don't know how Mr. Attlee suddenly agreed to give India Independence. In reality it has everything to do with the national army that was raised by Subhash Chandra Bose. The British had been ruling the country in the firm belief that whatever may happen in the country or whatever the politicians do, they will never be able to change the loyalty of British Indian soldiers. That was one prop on which they were carrying on the administration. And that was completely dashed to pieces. They found that soldiers could be seduced to form a party - a battalion to blow off the British. I think the British had come to the conclusion that if they were to rule India, the only basis on which they would rule was the maintenance of the British Army. The Red Fort Trials demolished that belief."Netaji drove out the British… though not in a way he had plannedNetaji's Azad Hind Fauj, lost militarily to the British, but in so doing it released a spirit of fear that would haunt the British till the day they left Indian shores forever. It was the fear of their vulnerability which became a reality the day British Indian soldiers drew inspiration from the patriotism, the selflessness and the sacrifices of their comrades in the Indian National Army.Clement Richard Attlee was the man, who as leader of the Labour Party and British Prime Minister between 1945 and 1951, signed off on the decision to grant Independence to India.Clement Richard Attlee on the eve of his Labour Party’s victory at the polls in 1945Clement Attlee, visited India in 1956. During that visit he was hosted at the stately Governor's palace in Kolkata for 2 days. PB Chakraborty was at that time the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and was also serving as the acting Governor of West Bengal. In those 2 days he had a detailed discussion with Attlee on the real reason the British left India.Chakraborty adds, "My direct question to Attlee was that since Gandhi's Quit India movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they had to leave?""In his reply Attlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British crown among the Indian army and Navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji," Justice Chakraborty says.That's not all. Chakraborty adds, "Toward the end of our discussion I asked Attlee what was the extent of Gandhi's influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Attlee's lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, m-i-n-i-m-a-l!"British revenge on Subhas Chandra Bose for his Patriotism… and the MutiniesThe one art colonial Britain had mastered was to exact revenge on a colony that would no longer bear the burden of serfdom. The partition of India is one such example. But, the mutinies triggered by Netaji's Indian National Army had created such a debilitating impact on the psyche of the British rulers that they wanted to forever exorcise the spirit of Subhas Chandra Bose.British politicians persuaded Nehru to make arrangements to have Netaji treated as a war criminal, who would no longer have a public life nor the freedom that a citizen of an independent nation is entitled to.On 18 August, 1945 a Japanese plane carrying Netaji was reported to have crashed in Taihoku, Taiwan. It was reported that Netaji had died from third degree burns.The myth of the plane crash lived on for quite a while, till questions began to be raised about the entire incident. Concrete evidence began to emerge that Netaji was not on that plane, and even that such a crash had never taken place.Then what happened to Subhas Chandra Bose?The one theory that has gained some credibility in recent times is that Netaji went into self-exile to a world power that would be friendly to him. He saw very clearly, that upon his return to India, Nehru would brand him a war criminal and his fate would be sealed.Under the Narendra Modi government, documents have surfaced that provide solid evidence as to how Nehru used India's counter intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to spy on Netaji's family and relatives in Kolkata for almost 20 years. Apart from intercepting and copying letters written by Bose's family members, the agency shadowed them on their domestic and foreign travels. IB seemed especially keen to know who all the Bose family members met and what they discussed. Some of this information, Nehru even shared with the British domestic intelligence agency MI5 as well.Such was the collective fear psychosis or paranoia that Nehru and the British shared on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. In terms of the language used in today’s world… Netaji would be on Nehru and Britain’s “Most Wanted” list.Even under the Narendra Modi government, there has been a stoic silence on disclosing the name of that nation. Indian diplomatic sources familiar with the now unclassified papers reveal that a disclosure would cause irreparable damage to India's friendly relations with that country.India’s Hindutsan Times published a story 'Bose was in Russia' on March 4, 2001.With the disintegration of the plane crash theory, it is now being believed that the Japanese had manufactured that fake news to allow for Netaji's escape to the Soviet Union, where he remained in exile for a considerable number of years.A document retrieved from India's National Archives reveals that the British were orchestrating Netaji's arrest and his trial as a war criminal outside of India. This document is dated 11 August, 1945. Exactly 7 days later, the Japanese faked Netaji's death in the plane crash. It is not too hard to connect the dots.After Nehru's death, when Indira Gandhi (Nehru's daughter) became India's Prime Minister, Netaji was allowed to return to India on the condition that he would live the rest of his life in India as a recluse, completely hidden from the public eye. He would also not be allowed to establish any contacts with his family in Kolkata.It was imperative for Indira Gandhi to keep Netaji under a state of virtual “house arrest” away from public view, simply maintain the myth of Netaji’s death in the 1945 plane crash - an event that her father (Nehru) had perpetuated as a historical fact.Ignorance is Bliss…Every year on 15 August, on the occasion of India's Independence Day, children in India listen to the familiar Hindi song as it blares on loudspeakers across towns and cities - "De di Hamein Azadi bina Kharag Bina Dhaal, Sabarmati ke Sant tune kar diya kamaal". It is an ode to Mahatma Gandhi which translates as "You gave us our freedom without a sword or a shield, O saint of the Sabarmati monastery, you created a miracle!". Its blissful, but it is not the truth.The Indian nation worships the memory of Gandhi at a memorial named "Raj Ghat" built for him in New Delhi. Important foreign dignitaries pay their respects to Gandhi at Raj Ghat, when they visit India.Compared to Gandhi’s Raj Ghat, there is no national memorial for Netaji in India.Today, hardly any Indian knows for sure how long he had lived, when did he die, where and how?Edit 1:Some readers get all prickly and defensive, when someone questions Gandhi and Nehru and applauds Subhash Chandra Bose.The “Disclaimer” in the 2nd paragraph of this post should allay your anxiety. I was anticipating some readers to come nit-picking on why Gandhi comes second while Netaji gets first prize… almost as if we were judging a talent show between the two great men.But, ask yourself these 2 questions.Would the British have left India in 1947 had there been no Netaji or the INA? Gandhi could have gone on with his non-violent movement and the British would have continued pampering his ego and that of Nehru, while they continued their rule for another decade or two.Had Netaji enjoyed the same influence and position of power that Gandhi and Nehru did under Lord Mountbatten and the British establishment, would he (Netaji) have allowed India to be partitioned?The British had a very clear objective in vilifying Netaji, while eulogizing the non-violence of Gandhi. The pretext of Gandhi’s movement of non-violence and non-cooperation allowed the British to save face when departing from India. With Netaji in power, the departure of Great Britain from its largest colony would have been mired in defeat and humiliation. The British didn’t want that nor did Nehru and his cronies.In the end, in criminalizing Netaji’s legacy, it was a win-win for all involved.Footnotes[1] Post-war Societies (India)

Although there are many deniers—including a prominent person on this site—there is no question that Japan was trying to build its own atomic bombs in WWII. This is not, however, the same thing as saying that “Japan (successfully) developed an atom bomb at the end of WWII”. In order to answer the question of whether Japan in fact succeeded in its own Second World War nuclear quest or not, we must consider the evidence and also the history of how that evidence appeared in public sources in the West.The story of the WWII Japanese atomic bomb project—or actually, “projects”, since there were at least four (4) of them—was first told in Western mass media in a 3 October 1946 story by the late newspaper writer and journalist, David Snell. A quick search on the internet did not yield any proper biographies of Snell, only a since-deleted Wikipedia entry—which was predictably and quickly dismissive of his Japanese a-bomb piece—and a useful if not particularly detailed “infogalactic dot com” article.David Snell (journalist)Atlanta Constitution Headline From 3 October 1946 Story by David Snell Alleging Successful Test of a Japanese Atomic Bomb at the Tail End of WWIISo rather than depend on hostile or incomplete sources, here it would be best to quote Snell directly. The following excerpt consists of roughly half of the full text of his article in the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. The complete text is available by following the link below the excerpt:When told this story, I was an agent with the Twenty-Fourth Criminal Investigation Department, operating in Korea. I was able to interview Capt. Wakabayashi (a pseudonym given to protect his identity), not as an investigator or as a member of the armed forces, but as a newspaperman. He was advised and understood thoroughly, that he was speaking for publication.He was in Seoul, en route to Japan as a repatriate. The interview took place in a former Shinto temple on a mount overlooking Korea's capital city. The shrine had been converted into an hotel for transient Japanese en route to their homeland.Since V-J Day wisps of information have drifted into the hands of U.S. Army Intelligence of the existence of a gigantic and mystery-shrouded industrial project operated during the closing months of the war in a mountain vastness near the Northern Korean coastal city of Konan. It was near here that Japan's uranium supply was said to exist.This, the most complete account of activities at Konan to reach American ears, is believed to be the first time Japanese silence has been broken on the subject.In a cave in a mountain near Konan, men worked against time, in final assembly of genzai bakuden, Japan's name for the atomic bomb. It was August 10, 1945 (Japanese time), only four days after an atomic bomb flashed in the sky over Hiroshima, and five days before Japan surrendered.To the north, Russian hordes were spilling into Manchuria.Shortly after midnight of that day a convoy of Japanese trucks moved from the mouth of the cave, past watchful sentries. The trucks wound through valleys, past sleeping farm villages. It was August, and frogs in the mud of terraced rice paddies sang in a still night. In the cool predawn Japanese scientists and engineers loaded genzai bakudan aboard a ship in Konan.Off the coast near an inlet in the Sea of Japan more frantic preparations were under way. All that day and night ancient ships, junks and fishing vessels moved into the anchorage.Before dawn on Aug. 12 a robot launch chugged through the ships at anchor and beached itself on the inlet. Its passenger was genzai bakudan. A clock ticked.The observers were 20 miles away. This waiting was difficult and strange to men who had worked relentlessly so long who knew their job had been completed too late.OBSERVORS BLINDED BY FLASHThe light in the east where Japan lay grew brighter. The moment the sun peeped over the sea there was a burst of light at the anchorage blinding the observers who wore welders' glasses. The ball of fire was estimated to be 1,000 yards in diameter. A multicolored cloud of vapors boiled toward the heavens then mushroomed in the stratosphere.The churn of water and vapor obscured the vessels directly under the burst. Ships and junks on the fringe burned fiercely at anchor. When the atmosphere cleared slightly the observers could detect several vessels had vanished.Genzai bakudun in that moment had matched the brilliance of the rising sun in the east.Japan had perfected and successfully tested an atomic bomb as cataclysmic as those that withered Hiroshima and Nagasaki.The time was short. The war was roaring to its climax. The advancing Russians would arrive at Konan before the weapon could be mounted in the ready Kamikaze planes to be thrown against any attempted landing by American troops on Japan's shores.It was a difficult decision. But it had to be made.The observers sped across the water, back to Konan. With the advance units of the Russian Army only hours away, the final scene of this gotterdammerung began. The scientists and engineers smashed machines, and destroyed partially completed genzai bakudans.Before Russian columns reached Konan, dynamite sealed the secrets of the cave. But the Russians had come so quickly that the scientists could not escape.This is the story told me by Capt. Wakabayashi.1946 Atlanta Constitution Atom Bomb Articles Link to a transcription of Snell’s complete original newspaper story and related articlesNote that the Japanese term “Genzai bakudan” in Snell’s article is probably more correctly rendered “genshi hakai dan”and is literally translated into English as “element bomb”.Subsequent denials, harrumph-harrumphs and how-dare-you-sirs quickly appeared in various newspapers, including (shockingly—not) a New York Times piece in which “an MIT scientist scoffed” at the idea that Japan had been doing its own advanced nuclear weapons work during WWII and might even have successfully tested an atomic bomb.US Occupation entities conducted fairly extensive investigations into whatever Japan was doing with its nuclear weapons R&D, but there was considerable political pressure to brush everything under the rug because the United States had already determined that Japan would be brought into the Western orbit as a Cold War proxy state to thwart Soviet expansion into the Pacific. What digging there was, was done by 1) the Atomic Bomb Mission, attached to the Manhattan Engineer District and thus an Asian version of the highly successful “Alsos” European atomic intelligence gathering effort, and 2) the Scientific Intelligence Survey, headed by the prominent American scientist Dr. Karl T. Compton. Compton had been a member of the “Interim Committee”, the advisory think tank formed by President Truman soon after he took office whose mission was to recommend the best use of the newly perfected American a-bomb. Of the two, the Atomic Bomb Mission was much more persistent and raised many more questions until it was finally ordered to cease and desist in the late 1940s. The Scientific Intelligence Survey quickly reached its own “conclusions” and was plainly acting as an arm of the US State Department, which had already decided as a fait accompli that there was nothing to see here, so move along, move along.There was, however, one notable result of US investigations that was immediately obvious.US Occupation Forces Dismantling One of the Massive Cyclotrons at the Riken Institute North of Tokyo, Japan, on 4 December 1945.https://books.google.com/books?id=BkkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=tokyo+bay+cyclotrons+sunk&source=bl&ots=9JXLOtdJ2X&sig=bcCyvZB0mJBjyS4iGuT9AHS0GQ8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=JAxAVJLRK82NyAT_y4KQAQ#v=onepage&q=tokyo%20bay%20cyclotrons%20sunk&f=false — link goes to a Life magazine story about the destruction of the Japanese cyclotrons, including photos of Professor Yoshio Nishina, head of theoretical research for the Japanese Army’s WWII nuclear weapons program.Tokyo, Japan 1917-1950: Rare Images Of Love, Loathing And Life - Flashbak — additional Life magazine photos, including the two immediately above.A total of five (5) cyclotrons had been located in Japan, with two of them at the Riken Institute—the headquarters of Japanese “big science” and the location of the offices of Dr. Yoshio Nishina, head scientist of the Japanese Army’s atomic bomb enterprise, known as “Project Ni”. Cyclotrons are particle accelerators capable of measuring the neutron fission cross section of uranium and other fissionable elements, and they can also be used to create fissile materials themselves, although the output of all but the largest cyclotrons is very small. American Occupation forces arrived at the Riken and other Japanese science institutes in November of 1945. Using axes and dynamite, they quickly disassembled all 5 machines and dumped the wreckage into Tokyo Bay—obviously a rather extreme measure if there was no danger of Japanese science being anywhere close to a nuclear weapon.US Occupation Forces Destroying Professor Bunsaku Arakatsu’s Cockroft-Walton Particle Accelerator on 24 November 1945. This Device, Along With Arakatsu’s Own Massive Cyclotron, Was Located at Kyoto Imperial University, the Primary R&D Center for the Japanese Navy’s Nuclear Weapons and Propulsion Effort, Project F-Go, During WWII. Photo Courtesy of the Website Atomic Heritage Dot Org.Cockcroft–Walton generator - WikipediaSnell’s account then receded into the background until the Korean War. This time the NYT ran an article that actually supported Snell’s story, “North Korean Plant Held Uranium Works”, in the 26 October 1950 edition, on page 3. This particular article was, naturally, based on testimony of US soldiers fighting on the Korean Peninsula, most notably in the region of Konan (Hamhung), North Korea and at the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.Battle of the Chosin Reservoir | Korean WarM-26 Pershing Tank and US Marines During the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, November - December 1950.American troops were operating in precisely the area in which Snell and his pseudonymous source located the WWII Japanese atomic bomb project (or one of them—more detail on this point later). Tucked away in the Wikipedia entry about the Chosin Reservoir clash is this note:“(The) Chosin Reservoir is a man-made lake located in the northeast of the Korean peninsula. The name Chosin is the Japanese pronunciation of the Korean place name Changjin, and the name stuck due to the outdated Japanese maps used by UN forces. The battle's main focus was around the 78 miles (126 km) long road that connects Hungnam and Chosin Reservoir.”Battle of Chosin Reservoir - WikipediaUS MARINES at Chosin ReservoirHungnam was the North Korean coastal city near the site at which the alleged-to-exist Japanese atomic bomb was said to have been tested. Snell’s article states that the bomb was assembled in a cave above Hungnam, then trucked down a road to the coast, where it was detonated at “an inlet in the Sea of Japan”.The Chosin Reservoir was, in fact, part of a colossal hydroelectric plant—built by Japanese zaibatsu colonial industrialists—whose output was two and a half times greater than the Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric installations that had powered the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, TN, where the US built its Little Boy U-235 atomic bomb in WWII.Retreating US forces, which had previously advanced past Hungnam on their way north, were taken off by amphibious transports in the aftermath of the fighting withdrawal by the “Frozen Chosen”. Whatever proof they might have seen of Japan’s WWII nuclear activities in that port city was probably destroyed when the Americans dynamited most of the buildings to prevent their capture by the advancing Chinese.US Navy Attack Personnel Destroyer USS Begor (APD-127) Off the Coast of Hungnam (Konan), Korea, During American Demolition of Port Facilities, December 1950.However, a few photos of the massive, if by that point badly damaged, facilities at Hungnam did surface in the public realm. Most of these were taken by various US personnel, either during their advance to the north or their subsequent retreat to the south. One of them is immediately below:Some of the Ruins of Hungnam, North Korea, Seen Here on 18 November, 1950. The American Journalist David Snell Called The Electrical Power Infrastructure Clearly Visible in This Photo, “The Greatest Concentration of High Voltage Electrical Wiring I Have Ever Seen”. Photograph Courtesy of Dwight Rider and is From His Personal Research Into the Wartime Japanese Nuclear Projects.As it happened, a halfhearted retraction of the 26 October NY Times story was subsequently printed on the back page on 3 November, quoting “Tenth Corps Headquarters” in Korea. Thus US officialdom once again told the world that there was nothing to see here. (Both of these articles and others are cited in Robert Wilcox’s book, Japan’s Secret War, pgs. 212-3).Yet again Snell’s account faded from history.And yet again, it would be resurrected, this time from a Japanese source.Science and Society in Modern Japan, a Book Edited in Part by Eri Yagi. Yagi Studied Under the Yale University Professor of the History of Science, Derek de Solla Price.Amazon.com: Science and Society in Modern Japan (The M.I.T. East Asian science series ; 5) (9780262140225): Shigeru Nakayama, David L. Swain, Eric Yagi: BooksEri Yagi is one of the more prominent names in Japanese science over the past half century. In the early 1960s, she was a student at Yale University under the direction of the eminent physicist, historian of science, and information scientist Derek de Solla Price.Publication List — Eri Yagi’s professional scientific publicationsDerek John de Solla Price (Official Site) Official Website of the late Yale University professor, Derek de Solla PriceYagi would make a name for herself in the latter years of the 20th century, as her list of subsequent published papers demonstrates. Price was already justifiably famous for his work regarding the discovery and purpose of the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism.Gears from the Greeks. The Antikythera Mechanism: A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B. C.Modern Replica of the Original Ancient Greek Analog Computer, the Antikythera MechanismIn the November 1962 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Price and his then-graduate student Yagi published an open letter detailing the few scraps of information that had come to him (probably at least in part from Yagi herself) about Japan’s attempts to build atomic bombs during WWII. There wasn’t much other than the names of a couple of Japanese scientists, an apparently early code name, Project AEROPOWER, and a few financial records describing certain sums of yen earmarked for nuclear R&D. After telling the world what he had learned to that point in time, Price asked the world scientific community at large to come forward with any additional information. I have never read that anyone did so. Note that the choice of the word “Aeropower” was probably a reflection of the personal interest of General Takeo Yasuda in nuclear physics, Yasuda being the head of the Army Aeronautical Technical Research Institute when the Army first began serious investigation into nuclear weapons in April of 1940 (see the section on Project Ni below).Takeo Yasuda - WikipediaCover of the November 1962 Issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Which Yale University Professor Derek de Solla Price and His Japanese Graduate Student Eri Yagi Asked the World Scientific Community for More Information About the WWII Japanese Atomic Bomb Projectshttps://books.google.com/books?d...— Link to Price and Yagi’s November 1962 Open Letter in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.Shortly before his death in 1985, Price passed the story to the American journalist Robert Wilcox, whose subsequent archival research and personal interviews formed the basis of his book, Japan’s Secret War.Book Review: Japan's Secret War: Japan's Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb (Robert K. Wilcox): WWIICover of the 1995 2nd Edition of Japan’s Secret War by Robert K. Wilcox.Wilcox’s book was of course instantly controversial and it continues to be in the present day. In my experience this is almost never because of any disagreement with the factual content, but rather simply because the idea of a WWII Japanese atomic bomb flies in the face of the postwar leftist pseudomorality that unfortunately soon grew up around the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.William Pellas's answer to Why is Nazi Germany stereotyped as villainous while Japan’s militarism is presented in American pop culture as repository of ancient chivalrous martial art?It should be noted, too, that most critics of Wilcox accuse him of “claiming that Japan tested its own atomic bomb” or that “Japan had The Bomb, too”. Wrong. It was Snell and his anonymous Japanese source who said that Japan had test-fired its own atomic bomb just after the second American nuclear attack. What Wilcox did was take the earlier information from Snell, Yagi, and Price, and then couple it with the results of his own personal interviews and archival research to see if Snell’s story could be corroborated. Japan’s Secret War is still the best and most complete overview of Japan’s attempted atomic bomb development in WWII.In the first two editions of his book, Wilcox was able to document three of the four known wartime Japanese nuclear projects. These were:Project Ni, the Japanese Army’s nuclear weapons program, led initially by Professor Yoshio Nishina and later by the Army scientist, Lt. Col. Tatsusaburo Suzuki. Nishina and his immediate staff were headquartered at the Riken Institute, just north of Tokyo, the birthplace of Japanese “big science”. Suzuki is the man who personally conducted the 1940 industrial and mineralogical survey that convinced the Japanese Army that building an atomic bomb was feasible. It is likely that he worked on specialized metallurgy for use in thermal diffusion and possibly gaseous diffusion separators from the start of the project until 1943. So far as I have been able to determine to this point, while thermal diffusion, gaseous diffusion, and electromagnetic separation were all studied and considered, only the thermal diffusion separators were actually built. Project Ni was significantly disrupted by severe damage to the Riken Institute as a result of the “Great Tokyo Fire Raid” of 9–10 March, 1945. Note that this mission, and not either of the two atomic bombings, was far and away the deadliest air raid of the entire war. 73 Years Ago Today: The Deadliest Air Raid in History, Operation Meetinghouse.Project F-Go, the Japanese Navy’s nuclear weapons and propulsion effort. The lead scientists here were Professor Bunsaku Arakatsu—formerly the personal student of Einstein himself—and future Nobel laureate, Hideki Yukawa. Arakatsu decided to go with the ultracentrifuge for uranium separation, and at least one large machine was built; according to Wilcox it was destroyed by B_29s at a railroad siding in mainland Japan while en route to Korea. Whether any additional units were built is unknown. F-Go was headquartered at Kyoto Imperial University. The city of Kyoto, in one of history’s supreme ironies, was spared from inclusion on the emerging American nuclear attack list by the US Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. Stimson never knew that his decision was enabling the Japanese to proceed with their own atomic weapons development. The city saved from the atomic bombThe Joint Imperial Japanese Army-Navy Atomic Bomb Research Program, called in some sources “Project F-NZ”. This was the result of the late-war amalgamation of the previously competing Army and Navy efforts, and was probably organized in the immediate aftermath of the B-29 Great Tokyo Fire Raid (Operation Meetinghouse) in early March, 1945, which destroyed most of the buildings at the Riken Institute, along with Nishina’s thermal diffusion UF-6 uranium separation pilot plant. Japan’s last ditch nuclear weapons effort was located in what is today North Korea and utilized the considerable industrial muscle—particularly the enormously powerful hydroelectric power plants—that had been built up after Korea came under Japanese control following the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War. As far as I have been able to determine, none of the Japanese industrial belt in Korea was ever attacked by Allied forces throughout the entire war until the Red Army overran the region in August - September, 1945. William Pellas' answer to Was Korea, an important Japanese colony, bombed by our B-29's in WWII?Japanese Nuclear Scientist Yoshio Nishina, Far Left, With Other Prominent Physicists at the Riken Institute, Probably in 1929. Werner Heisenberg is Fourth From Left.The RIKEN Story | RIKEN From the Riken’s present-day website.The fourth epicenter of wartime Japanese atomic bomb development was somewhere in mainland Asia, probably in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, under the auspices of the shadowy Unit 516 of the Kwantung Army. Unit 516 is described in most sources as a chemical weapons specialty group operating under the supervision of the notorious bioweapons lab, Unit 731. However, certain OSS documents from “Project Ramona” indicate that it was also working on atomic bombs. The OSS papers—cited extensively by Wilcox in the recently issued Third Edition of his book—point to a decision by the Kwantung Army to attempt development of nuclear weapons following the decisive defeat of Japanese ground forces by the Soviet Union at Khalkin Gol in the undeclared, 1939 border war in Mongolia. I believe, but have not yet seen documentary proof, that the Kwantung project was likely folded into the crash program in Korea in 1945.The Forgotten Soviet-Japanese War of 1939It is claimed in the same OSS files that the Kwantung project also attempted a test detonation or perhaps a “cold test”, somewhere in the Gobi Desert. Very few details of what was going on in this end of the Japanese effort have surfaced to date; Wilcox is again the best and most complete source available in the public realm, as the third edition of Secret War, first published in 2019, contains a section derived from the Ramona documents. I was able to find one corroborating paper at the US National Archives, when I visited in 2012. This was a very brief mention by Nishina of a wartime Japanese scientist of his acquaintance who, according to him, was doing atomic bomb R&D in Japanese-controlled Chinese territory and had gone over to the Chinese communists after the war and was now working on The Bomb for them. If this is so, it means that Japan was anything but a nuclear victim. Rather, she has made her own, sizable contribution to world nuclear weapons proliferation. Both China and Russia (through its capture of Hungnam and the surrounding industrial infrastructure), as well as North Korea, very likely benefited from the fruits of wartime Japanese nuclear weapons research and development.It is clear that Japan’s initial approach to producing a nuclear detonation was broadly similar to what the United States was doing with what ultimately became the U-235 “Little Boy” atomic fission bomb. It is likely that Nishina was the primary impetus in this direction, as the Kuroda Papers (see the notes in the Sources section below this Answer) contain considerable discussion of the use of U-235 as an explosive along with extensive mathematical calculations to that effect. The use and benefits of a polonium neutron initiator or “spark plug”, as well as a neutron reflector or “tamper”, are also mentioned. All three of these were integral parts of the American Little Boy gun-type U-235 atomic fission bomb.Based on what I have seen to this point in time, however, it appears to me that Japan probably did not separate - enrich enough U-235 to enable the production of a bomb along the same lines as the gun-type “Little Boy” device—that is, not within the time frame of the war as it actually played out. Therefore, if one or perhaps two Japanese nuclear devices of some kind really were test-fired, it stands to reason that some other source or sources of fissile material must have been utilized—and also that the Japanese bomb, if in fact it did exist in prototype form, probably at least attempted to employ a more efficient detonation mechanism than the easier to build but also grossly inefficient gun-type.There are two candidates if Japan was able to manufacture or acquire additional “bomb fuel” besides the small (and insufficient) amount of enriched uranium she is believed to have produced during the war. One, Nazi Germany, whose own nuclear weapons projects were along significantly different lines but whose R&D may still have helped the Japanese, and two, a “pile” or production reactor.William Pellas's answer to Were any nuclear bombs tested before Hiroshima and Nagasaki?Regarding nuclear cooperation between Imperial Japan and the Hitler regime, a recent opinion piece by the Japanese journalist Yonichi Shimatsu makes a couple of startling claims. The first is that the real beginning of Japanese interest in nuclear weapons goes all the way back to Heisenberg’s visit to the Riken in 1929. From there, a joint Nazi-Japanese consortium known as “Bund-Eine” (Alliance One) operated a uranium mine located on Mount Uzumine on the outskirts of Sukagawa, southeast Fukushima Prefecture. Possible corroboration is found in the article below, which mentions extensive monazite deposits among the other “rare earth minerals” found in and around Uzumine. Uranium ores are often found in monazite.RARE-ELEMENT MINERALOGY OF THE UZUMINE GRANITIC PEGMATITE, ABUKUMA MOUNTAINS, NORTHEASTERN JAPANShimatsu also draws a direct line through history which connects the recently retired Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi. Kishi was the head of Japan’s WWII Munitions Ministry and, according to Shimatsu, was directly involved in financing the Korean nuclear effort. Although I have yet to research Shimatsu’s sources for his article, his information is compelling and, I think, probably true. (NOTE: the link immediately below seems to be vacillating between active and dead, and I have gotten both results when I clicked on it in recent weeks. The article title is as it appears below so it may be reachable with certain web browsers but not others.)Opinion: Hiroshima memories compel us to save the last childIt is known that there were dozens of submarine cargo voyages between Germany and Japan during the war, with missions carried out by German, Japanese, and Italian submarines. There were also surface ship blockade runners until mid-1943, as well as ultra-long distance flights by specialized aircraft throughout the war. At least one of these aircraft, and probably more than one, was a repurposed prototype from the cancelled Amerikabomber project that was subsequently operated by one of Germany’s sonderkommando (“Special Command”, ie, special forces) formations.German WW2 Amerika Bombers - Concepts and ProjectsA Messerschmitt Me-264 Long Range Bomber in Flight. Although Cancelled After a Handful of Prototypes Were Constructed, it is Likely That at Least One of These Aircraft Flew Multiple Sonderkommando Missions Between Finland and Japan During WWII. Whether These Flights Were Connected in Any Way With Axis Nuclear Weapons Projects is Unknown at This Time.Only the submarines are known to have attempted the transport of nuclear weapons material and technology. A number of U-boats and I-boats involved in this “Nuclear Axis” (as the author Philip Henshall termed it) were hunted down and sunk by determined Allied antisubmarine countermeasures. Perhaps it is a coincidence that a fairly large number of the “boats” involved in the underwater cargo missions were destroyed. Or maybe Allied intelligence specifically targeted them because it knew, or had some inkling, that the Axis submarines had something to do with attempts at building nuclear weapons. I will say that enough of these attempted uranium supply missions were killed or compromised for me to suspect strongly that there was, in fact, an Allied atomic bomb interdiction effort—but I cannot say for certain at this time.Regarding a Japanese “pile” or reactor, Japanese science was certainly equal to the task of building one, as demonstrated by the rapid emergence of nuclear power in Japan less than 20 years after the end of WWII despite the enormous destruction in nearly every one of Japan’s major industrial centers during the war. Whether one or more were built during the actual conflict, I don’t know without a deeper and broader examination of declassified documents than I have been able to do to this point. (Note: fellow researcher Dwight Rider has documents in his possession which indicate considerable wartime Japanese interest in “Magnox” reactors. Several nuclear power stations that utilized this approach were built in the UK shortly following the end of the war. Magnox is a dual-use technology—that is, reactors of this type are used for both power generation and plutonium production—and have the considerable advantage of being able to run using natural uranium as fuel. Magnox - Wikipedia)As for the targets of an actual Japanese atomic bomb, it has been known since the 1970s that Japan’s military was developing its own nuclear attack list and that it included the US B-29 bases on Tinian Island which were used for the American missions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.William Pellas's answer to What if the Japanese were the first to drop a nuclear bomb?And according to a German Catholic priest who claimed to have heard it personally from a Japanese university official in the ruins of Hiroshima, the American west coast city of San Francisco could also have been hit by an atomic bomb had Japan been able to complete them in time.William Pellas's answer to Did the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki wipe out a significant portion of Japanese Christians?None of this is definitive proof that the Japanese actually succeeded, during WWII itself, in producing a practical, functioning atomic bomb or nuclear weapon in some form. But they certainly made a considerable effort to do so. And at minimum, they came much closer to turning the end of the Second World War into an exchange of weapons of mass destruction than most people know or care to admit in the present day.—————————————————————————————————-PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCESJapanese Intelligence in World War II — Link goes to Quoran Dwight Rider’s book, Tsetusuo Wakabayashi Revealed. In addition to surveying the evidence he has gathered pointing to what he believes is “Wakabayashi’s” real identity, Rider provides considerable background information about Japanese atomic bomb research and development during WWII.Japanese Atomic Bomb Project From the website atomicheritage dot org. Factually correct as far as it goes, but dismisses Robert Wilcox’s work (without having the courtesy to mention him by name) as “a conspiracy theory”.New evidence of Japan's effort to build atom bomb at the end of WWII This is a Los Angeles Times piece by Jake Adelstein about the discovery of WWII Japanese Navy Project F-Go ultracentrifuge design blueprints at Kyoto University. Adelstein states incorrectly that two Japanese on board the German submarine U-234 killed themselves “upon being captured”, when in fact they committed suicide after learning that the crew intended to surrender to the United States. The article is otherwise factually correct.What If, in World War II, Japan Got the Atomic Bomb First? Follow-up article by Adelstein dated 6 August 2019, the day that the Third Edition of Japan’s Secret War was released—in Japan, and translated in Japanese.Was Japan building a nuclear bomb? Notebooks uncovered in Kyoto show how far wartime scientists had got — South China Morning Post article about the Project F-Go notebooks.Japan ‘came close’ to wartime A-bomb Article contains personal testimony from Japanese Army scientist Lt. Col. Tatsusaburo Suzuki about Project Ni, the Army’s WWII atomic bomb effort. Suzuki disclosed that Japan’s nuclear program considered electromagnetic isotope separation in the form of a proposed gargantuan cyclotron. Thermal diffusion separators were designed for the Army program, and at least a handful were actually built. These were apparently based on Nishina’s original pilot plant apparatus at the Riken Institute. Ultracentrifuges were designed for the Navy—Wilcox states that at least one was completed—and may possibly have been influenced by German machinery that was built under the direction of Dr. Paul Harteck.The German Physical Chemist Dr. Paul Harteck Was a Pioneer in the Development of Highly Efficient Centrifuge Machinery.Paul Harteck - WikipediaAtomic plans returned to Japan BBC News website article by Jane Warr about the return of the “Kuroda Papers” (so called after the name of a WWII Japanese nuclear scientist who had them in his possession) to the Riken Institute north of Tokyo. The Papers are a series of notes transcribed directly from three lectures given by Nishina at the Riken on the state of Japanese nuclear weapons research.An English translation of the Papers, along with a detailed commentary on what they contain by Dwight Rider and Eric Hehl, is found here:http://www.mansell.com/Resources/Rider_The_Kuroda_Papers_25-March-2020.pdfThe Kuroda PapersRegarding the progress of wartime Japanese nuclear weapons science, a Japanese Asahi Shimbun newspaper article dated 25 August 2005 and titled “Lost A-Bomb Research Resurfaces in Hiroshima”, states the following:Of the 60 kilograms of uranium 235 used in the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum,about 1 kilogram was used for the atomic detonation. The reports (of the Japanese who investigated the Hiroshima atomic attack) thus suggest that the Japanese military had grasped the essential characteristics of the bomb with relative accuracy soon after it was dropped. "In Japan, too, during the war, the army and navy were separately undertaking atomic research," explained Masakatsu Yamazaki, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and an expert on the history of atomic development. "After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, those who were involved in the research speedily began to investigate the bombing. The investigative team determined four days after the bombing that it had been an atomic bomb, because they had a high level of scientific analytical capability as a result of their own atomic research."http://www.energy-net.org/N-LET/... Item #13 in this link goes to a transcription of the full text of the piece in the Asahi Shimbun.Yoshio NishinaBunsaku ArakatsuYukawa Hideki | Japanese physicist — comprehensive overview of Yukawa’s sterling career in science, but with no mention whatsoever of his work on Project F-Go as Arakatsu’s head theoretical mathematician.Logs of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Yukawa show clues on wartime nuke research - The MainichiJapanese Nuclear Scientist and Nobel Laureate Hideki YukawaJapanese Scientist and College Professor Kazuo “Paul” Kuroda, 1917–2001. During WWII, Kuroda Was One of the Scientists Working on the Atomic Bomb at the Riken Institute for the Japanese Army’s Project Ni.http://physicstoday.scitation.or... Link to a Physics Today news page that includes a brief story about the return of the WWII Project Ni papers that were in Kuroda’s possession to the Riken Institute in 2002.Paul Kazuo Kuroda (1917–2001)Summary of Kuroda’s outstanding career in science both in Japan and in the United States. Note that prior to WWII he was a professor at Tokyo Imperial University. This was one of the centers of Japanese atomic bomb R&D during the war.Questions About Hiroshima Persist – Reconsidering Obama’s “Apology” and Truman's Claim that Hiroshima was a Military Target - A blog written by Dr. Stephen Bryenhttps://www.csmonitor.com/1995/0801/01041.html — “Japan Eyed Bomb, Favored Using It”. This is a brief article in the Christian Science Monitor newspaper from 1995. Most notable is its confirmation of the likely target of a WWII Japanese atomic bomb—the US B-29 base in the Marianas Islands.The Japanese nuclear weapons program • Axis History Forum I found a copy of this extensive discussion thread at the US National Archives when I went to NARA’s College Park, MD location in 2012.William Pellas's answer to People debate the morality of using atomic weapons on WWII Japan. I don't but I do wonder about two bombs. Did we have to drop two?