Airboy, Women, and Codebreaking in WWII

As an adult, I found it hard to take in the "new reality" Americans faced after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. So imagine how children in the United States felt after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Suddenly, Daddy and older brothers were signing up for the military, and Mommy was heading off to work in the factory to jumpstart a war program. Comics like "Airboy" would have helped frightened children feel more empowered. Just like the movie "Top Gun," "Airboy" would have helped children make sense of the sudden ravages to their home lives. 

"Airboy" may have inspired their older brothers to join the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. It might have helped Army draftees feel better, thinking that all Americans were joining the fight in some way. At the very least, "Airboy" gave Navy seamen something to distract them while off duty, as they never knew when a squadron of the dreaded Japanese Zeros might bomb them, or a German U-Boat might sink their ship with a torpedo. 

Perhaps young women also read "Airboy." The stories might have inspired them to work in factories, or train to be nurses, just like Agatha Christie did in England during WWI. Women felt a duty to defend the homeland, and support and protect the boys.

Women didn't just work in factories or hospitals during WWII. They also played a crucial role in defending soldiers lives before battles were even fought!

In wartime, it's important to know what the enemy is planning. German leaders coordinated their military by coding messages sent by radio or phone. They did this by using encoding machines.

While other models preceded it, the best known machine used by the Germans was the Enigma machine. The model above was one specially commissioned for Adolf Hitler.

The Japanese also used encoding machines to coordinate military strategy and troop movements. Americans called this model the Japanese Red machine. Like its German counterpart, Red could scramble messages that troops in far flung Japanese outposts could decode, but would make cryptologic analysts puzzle over for days.

To cut down on the time necessary to decode German and Japanese messages, Americans built their own decoding machines. The type below, designed and operated by women as well as men, was known as the Bombe. Catchy, right?

If you ever find yourself in Maryland, visit the National Cryptologic Museum, where I took the above three photographs. There you'll find exhibits on all manner of Crytological devices, from simple code breaking methods used during the American Revolutionary war, to the Cray supercomputers used before the age of smartphones. The knowledgeable staff may not know much about "Airboy", but they can certainly tell you how the men and women who might have read the comic helped defend service members, and our shores, during World War II.

Dragon Dave

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National Cryptologic Museum