The Motor Torpedo Boat Training Center at Melville used combat
veterans as instructors to train both officers and enlisted men who
would serve in all facets of PT service. By mid-1945, the center
had trained more than 1,800 officers and 12,000 enlisted men.
Called "green dragons" and "devil boats" by the Japanese, the
PTs used a combination of gunfire and torpedoes in high seas
hit-and-run operations, before zigzagging away behind a
smokescreen. In contrast to the largely exaggerated claims of PT
boat attacks on Japanese destroyers, the boats had really earned
their keep in the Pacific fleet with successful attacks on Japanese
barges and shore batteries.
A young LT (jg) John F. Kennedy trained at Melville in PT Boat
operations in the fall of 1942. Coincidentally enough, an equally
young Richard M. Nixon was undergoing basic officer training
earlier that same year, spending two months at the Quonset Point
Naval Air Station just across the Narragansett Bay. What is even
more remarkable is that around that same time period, one of the
Navy's youngest aviators, George H.W. Bush, was undergoing flight
training at Charlestown, south of Quonset Point. LT Bush proposed
to his future wife Barbara while he was stationed there.
At the time LT (jg) Kennedy was training in Melville, the US
Navy was still using the CSP-488 cipher wheel for secure, low level
tactical communications (although the Navy would soon replace it
with the CSP-1500). While I cannot be sure LT (jg) Kennedy actually
used a CSP-488, but let's assume he did.
The young officer has received the following encrypted message
as his crew reports for duty. Deciphering it, he finds the location
of his next assignment.
OHUMEBONTVSMAMCBYIJYFDRRV
LWIAXEVQIJGSDFZLVRMWAPDRM
ZSKRSOUFBFSLRFVLJGFAMBODM
KGKCQKVHKSXGCJUMXGVMVMLZQ
ZZKLTJVLFAXEYRBMXLPWUSIZT
WYKKGRPUGNTOIWECHFBFDDGSJ
In order for you to find the cache, you will need to first learn
how the CSP-488 works, determine the key, and then decipher the
message, which will yield the coordinates and a partial hint. Cache
is a nano.
I will not outright give you the key (in order for the key to
remain secure it should not be passed over open channels), but it
is 13 letters long, two words, and it is the collective nickname
for the PT Boat force.