In April 1943, a Japanese army engineer hacking through the Bougainville jungle found the wreckage of a bomber and, beneath a tree, a man sitting upright in his seat, white-gloved hands gripping a samurai sword. The man was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of Pearl Harbor and commander in chief of the Japanese combined fleet. This episode unravels Operation Vengeance, the American mission that put him there, and what happens when a nation's entire intelligence and military apparatus is aimed at a single individual.

We trace the chain from Yamamoto's rigid punctuality and his risky morale tour of frontline bases, through the code breakers who cracked the super-enciphered JN-25D message revealing his exact itinerary, to Major John Mitchell's 18 P-38 Lightnings flying a 600-mile roundabout route at wave-top height using only compass and sto ...