Eric Nave, an Australian naval officer, was the first to unravel Japanese naval telegraphy and to break Imperial Japanese Navy codes. Yet few Australians have ever heard of the exploits and achievements of this exceptionally talented man who did so much for the safety and security of our country. This biography tells how a bright lad with ambition and with a powerful streak of luck entered and carved his own special niche in the arcane world of codebreaking. It sets his achievements against the geopolitical shifts which led to war with Japan in 1941. It explores the dysfunctional nature of US signals intelligence and its effects on war in the South West Pacific, and charts the rise of Australia's quantitative and qualitative contribution to Allied intelligence.