Bo Kendrick-Holmes’s Reviews > A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Secret Game that Won the War > Status Update

“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”

“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”

“One unassuming bullet point [in the report] also mentioned the fact that U-99’s crew had been searched and, among their possessions, an illustration of the point-blank tactics pioneered by Kretschmer had been found. The importance of the document apparently evaded those who read the report. The revelation was neither noted nor communicated to the escort commanders.”

“‘When a man joins the forces…personal liberty is reduced to a minimum,’ Prien had written in an autobiography published in Germany during the early years of the war. ‘Its place is taken by the word of command, the iron discipline of service under arms. The sailor is always on duty.’”

“Technology has a distancing effect on combat. […] With each step change the attacker is removed yet farther from the material effects of his actions. At a distance it is harder to properly count the cost. It is, surely, our obligation to count the cost.”