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

by Simon Parkin

boat would be almost imperceptible. Six days after Impey’s presentation, the game, plainly named ‘A Portable Anti-Submarine Trainer’, was green-lit for production. Three variants would be produced, one for destroyer crews, one for corvette crews and a third for trawlers, at a cost of £5 per set (not including the extra reels of paper rolls and traces that would be required for any subsequent play-throughs). Such was the expense of manufacturing the ASDIC gramophones that only a few select crews were issued with these. In all, fifty-two sets were made for destroyers, thirty-eight for corvettes and sixty for the trawlers, at a total cost of £750. Just as Doenitz had used games to prepare for the tactical and operational challenges of the U-boat war in the Atlantic, now games were being used to prepare the Allied crews hunting down those very same U-boats. Carrs’ and Impey’s game proved a useful resource, revealing snags and pitfalls in the consequence-free arena of play, so that they might be avoided in the consequence-rich arena of battle. But while ‘A Portable Anti-Submarine Trainer’ was able to improve and perfect an escort crew’s procedures, it did nothing to expose the tactics being so effectively deployed by the U-boat captains. And neither did it train escort ships on how to work together. A well-trained crew could only do so much while working as an individual