A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II

by Simon Parkin

the green markings, legible to those peeking from the canvas holes. Turn by turn the pieces would move around the floor, as the escort ships dashed to the site of an explosion to drop depth charges, and the U-boats performed their feints and dodges in an effort to pick off convoy ships, while evading the escort. Okell’s role, Roberts explained, would be that of an umpire, measuring distances and marking movements in chalk to ensure that the game played out as accurately as possible. Finally, at the end of the game, the players would come together and, sitting around the board, now criss-crossed with chalk markings, Roberts would reveal how everyone had fared. More details needed to be worked out, Roberts explained, and by necessity the game was a simplification of real U-boat action, but there was enough here, he said, to begin staging recent sea battles. The objective was to experience the action from the perspective of the U-boats and, from that knowledge, assess what the escort commanders might have done differently to save ships, supplies and lives.