U-Boat Wargamers
This week’s inspirational women are the U-Boat Wargamers of the Western Approaches Tactical Unit (WATU) during the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII. The problem for the UK was that German U-Boats were preventing the arrival of important supplies from the US. If the UK ran out of supplies, this could have meant losing the war. To develop a way of outsmarting the U-Boats, a board game was created by a group from the Women’s Royal Naval Service (known as the Wrens) and a retired navy captain. The women were chosen for their mathematical and statistical ability, and included Janet Okell and Jean Laidlaw who were only 19 and 21 at the time. Battles were staged accurately to find out the tactics of the opposition. Once the tactics were discovered, the game could be used to decide how to counter them. Overall, 66 Wrens worked for the WATU in the three years that it was functional between 1942 and 1945.
A TV series called U-Boat Wargamers has since been made which documents this incredible story.
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