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

by Simon Parkin

Point nine, however, went against the written advice that U-boat captains maintain a minimum distance of 1,000 metres between the U-boat and its target. Kretschmer countered, plainly, that at every given opportunity, torpedoes should be fired at extreme close range. ‘This can only be done’, he wrote, ‘by penetrating the escort’s anti-submarine screen and, at times, getting inside the convoy lanes.’ Having scored three kills in quick succession, Kretschmer knew that there was no more efficient way to cause havoc on a British convoy, causing the escort captains to flounder. ‘This should be the objective of all our attacks,’ he added. In two sentences Kretschmer had outlined a tactic that would, in the months to come, lead to the deaths of thousands of Allied sailors and raise the line on the chart of shipping losses at the Admiralty in London perilously close to the red threshold of starvation. It was a tactic so effective that it would lead to the formation of a British unit staffed by a ragtag crew of women, led by a captain with a life-changing disability, dedicated to its uncovering.