Status Updates From A Game of Birds and Wolves:...

“Playing games is how theories grand and small are tested and refined, and through which vital, potentially life-saving experience is gained in an affordable and secretive manner.”

“War […] imposes a a certain form on the formlessness of life; it binds people with a common purpose […] When war ends there is, seemingly, a first flush of relief, a joyous moment in which to celebrate the birth of this new, longed for peace […] After all, the purpose of the war was to bring about precisely such an ending. Nevertheless, across jobless Britain, a vacuum was keenly felt.”

“The combination of WATU-developed tactics, the newly minted support groups and the closing of the air gap combined to make May 1943 the month in which the U-boats lost the Battle of the Atlantic, the war within a war.”

“‘Fighting U-boats is very much like playing football, or any other sort of game […] You have a team of a thousand men, any one of whom can wreck the whole show if he doesn’t do his job properly. Every man has his job to do. I am merely at the head of the affair.’” -John Walker

“By repeatedly playing through recent action at sea and using a game to understand the situation from all angles, he would be in a strong position to see where the British commanders had misunderstood the U-boats’ behavior. The process would enable him to formulate the first universal set of defensive tactics for the navy to use against U-boats, encouraging escort ships to work together like team-mates”