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

by Simon Parkin

Lamb’s ship was a member of the newly formed support groups, a rather plain name for highly trained, quick-moving flotillas that were sent into the Atlantic with the express purpose of providing impromptu assistance wherever it was required. The support group would, essentially, loiter in the ocean, waiting to be dispatched to the nearest emergency. The Oribi was currently escorting the convoy SC.127, en route from Sydney to Halifax. Horton estimated that it could be spared and, if it made good time, could be with Gretton within a day or two. The idea for these elite naval groups was devised months earlier by Sir Percy Noble, but he never had control of a sufficient number of spare ships to implement the plan. When Horton took over from Noble, he was equally convinced that this kind of flexible, hard-punching force would be decisive in the Battle of the Atlantic. On his first day at Derby House, Horton wrote to the Admiralty to press the ‘urgent need’ for these support groups. His appeal was rejected: there simply weren’t enough quick-footed warships available. Horton changed tack. He reasoned that since convoys still had to cross the Gap in the middle of the Atlantic unaccompanied, why not reduce the number of ships in the escorts either side of the area by one, and form the spare ships into support groups that could operate with more flexibility inside the Gap? After all, this was the only area of the ocean where the U-boats could still act with impunity and so represent...