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

by Simon Parkin

One team, positioned behind the canvas sheets at desks, played as the escort captains, he said. The other, usually captained by Roberts or his right-hand woman, Jean Laidlaw, played as the U-boats. As in the real Battle of the Atlantic, each side’s objective was focused on the convoy ships: the escort ships had to protect them, while the U-boats had to attack them. Each side had a secondary objective. For the escort ships, this was to sink as many U-boats as possible, while the U-boats hoped to avoid detection and exit the battlefield unharmed. The convoy ships, the prize in play for both sides, would automatically plod on at each turn of the game toward their destination, the battle raging around them, just as at sea. Next, Roberts explained the rules of the game. Players were given two minutes in which to submit their orders for the next ‘turn’, to replicate the urgency of a real battlefield. The movements of the U-boats were drawn in green5 chalk on the floor, a colour chosen as it was impossible to make out against the floor’s tint when viewed from an angle. This ensured the U-boat positions were undetectable to the players peering through the canvas screens. The escort ships’ movements would then be added to the floor in white chalk, which was, in contrast to