William Roskey

This third book in the series runs the gamut from exciting submarine action in the Sea of Japan and the Central Pacific to ONI's desperate fight in a basement at Pearl Harbor Naval Base to defeat the newest Japanese crypto machine.  Yamamoto's mighty Combined Fleet needs 10,000 tons of oil a day to keep it at sea. The Japanese Army also requires huge amounts of petroleum products for tanks, trucks, aircraft, and other military uses. In 1943, Commander Dade Bowie is ordered to take the U.S.S. Sea Otter into the Sea of Japan in an all-out effort to sink as many tankers as possible before they can reach Japanese ports. Simply penetrating one of the straits leading into the Sea of Japan without detection is difficult enough, but sinking ships in Japan's very backyard and somehow safely exiting the Sea of Japan turn out to be even more dangerous. In addition, it seems that either the Japanese may have broken the code used by American submarines or there is a security leak back at Pearl Harbor. In the meantime, ONI is shocked to learn that the Japanese have replaced their highly sophisticated crypto device, the Purple Machine. ONI had broken the code and had been reading all the Top Secret messages sent over it for nearly three years. Now the Navy's most valuable intelligence source is gone, and, just as the cryptologists begin to try to defeat its replacement, the Blue Machine, the leader of the unit dies unexpectedly. The Navy turns to his protégé, a 23-year-old mathematical genius and wife of a submarine officer to save the day.