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

by Simon Parkin

The game had enabled the fledgling tacticians to think like U-boat captains, and from that perspective the answer suddenly seemed obvious: having made your attack, you would of course dive. Then you would sit and wait for the convoy to roll overhead. ‘Eventually,’ Roberts concluded, ‘I would emerge, deep, from the stern of the convoy.’21 With the U-boat tactic abruptly unveiled, Roberts wanted to try out some potential countermeasures that might foil the plan. The four returned to the game room. Roberts assumed the role of the U-boat captain, and Laidlaw and Okell played as Walker’s escort ships. The countermeasure revealed itself immediately. Rather than splay out from the convoy at speed, dropping depth charges at random, Laidlaw and Okell lined the escort ships up around the convoy. While the convoy continued on its way, each escort ship performed a triangular