A couple of years ago, I recognized a new trend and category of recent “books about how women helped win World War II, and didn’t get any credit for it.” This book is definitely another excellent contribution to that category of history books.
The primary figure in the story was a forcibly retired but talented Royal Navy officer, who was brought out of retirement when the war began to devise strategies using war gaming for fighting the German U-Boat “Wolf Pack” attacks on Allied convoys in the North Atlantic.
However, much of the key talent that helped him succeed consisted of a group of young Wrens (women’s naval auxiliary members), most of them barely into adulthood, who helped design, test and play the naval war games that played a vital role in helping the British learn to defeat the Nazi U-boat campaign.
I particularly enjoyed the part where the young girls played overly-confident senior Royal Navy officers in the U-boat/convoy battle simulations, and consistently defeated these “experts” with their superior understanding of the tactics they’d learned from developing and playing these war games. The real payoff came when those officers began to accept the validity of the tactics they’d learned in the simulations, and started winning the battles at sea with the German U-boats.
But of course, as in so many other areas, it was only with the recent release of old archives that it became clear the vital role that these bright young women had played. For most of their lives, their contribution was shrouded in the same kinds of classified documents that hid the contributions of women in so many other areas of the war effort, and gave the famous men at the top all the credit. Highly recommended.
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