The world wonders

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"The world wonders" was security padding added by a radioman to a US Navy message from Admiral Chester Nimitz to Admiral William Halsey, Jr. on October 25, 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

Halsey had taken the whole of the 3rd Fleet, including six battleships under the name "Task Force 34", northward in pursuit of a fleet of Japanese aircraft carriers, leaving the landing beaches on the island of Leyte in the Philippines covered only by a small group of escort carriers from the 7th Fleet. On the morning of October 25, a strong Japanese force of battleships attacked this group, which appealed for assistance from Halsey.

The entire plaintext of the message transmitted was:

TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS

The words before the first 'GG' and after the last 'RR' are padding added to make cryptanalysis more difficult. The first paragraph, the material between 'GG' and 'X', is routing and classification information, metadata for the message itself. While decrypting and transcribing the message, Halsey's radio officer properly removed the leading phrase, but the trailing phrase seemed so apropos he seems to have thought it might have been intended and so left it in before passing it on to Halsey. The structure tagging (the 'RR's) should have made clear that the phrase was in fact padding.

The message (and its trailing padding) became famous, and created some ill feeling, since it appeared to be a harsh criticism by Nimitz of Halsey's decision to pursue the carriers and leave the landings uncovered. The Japanese high command had dispatched the force specifically as a decoy, and the American commander had fallen into the trap. Only through the actions of Clifton Sprague's Task Force 77.4.3 ("Taffy 3"), composed entirely of small escort carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts was the Japanese line of battle deterred (see Battle off Samar).

The padding phrase was perhaps inspired by the 90th anniversary of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Battle of Balaclava. Tennyson's famous poem contains a similar phrase:

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!