Battle of the Atlantic | Narrated by Alan Doyle

Thank you. Sharing this with my spouse

I am by far not an expert but it won’t stop me. lol A group of British female sailors, WRENS, were instrumental in improving Technique Tactics and Procedures (TTP) for convoy operations and security. Essentially the female sailors were divide into red and blue forces. Sometimes the two groups planned and took actions which the other side could not see. It was similar to playing the game Battleship.

Sometimes they recreated actual naval battles to peel back the onion to find the root causes or weaknesses that shaped the battles to their conclusions. They recreated a battle where U-boats attacked the center of the convoy which made them question how did they get into the center of the convoy. They were enamored with solving this mystery and war-gamed all night to sunrise. The female sailors postulated U-boats surfaced at night to attain the requisite speed to catch up with the convoys to enter the center. They shot their torpedoes and submerged and the convoy passed over them.

The UK War Minister had no confidence with the project the WRENS were endeavoring in. He was asked to be an audience to a sand table exercise one day conducted by the WRENS. He arrived at the building with little enthusiasm. He became more interested as the exercise progressed. The WRENS advised the UK War Minister to put escort ships in the rear and urged all escort ships to use sonars. This was the correct course of action to reduce U-boats attacking the center of convoys. At the conclusion of the exercise he had the utmost confidence in the project and told the Navy to change its TTPs that very day.

Tactics on both sides kept changing. The Allied forces reduced the threat posed by the U-boats as the war progressed predominantly by better technology like escort planes were eventually equipped with radars. Some new planes had the range to fly to the center of the Atlantic to increase the range of their mission to provide security and attack U-boats. Better radars and sonars were introduced. The Allied forces started to use aircraft carriers, and the German code was broken. One U-boat captain mused the Allied forces knew a lot a the U-boat operations. The changing fortunes were accomplished by a combination of new TTPs, capabilities, technologies, and new weapons platforms.

I am done with my drivel for the night.