Western Approaches Tactical Unit(WATU)

WATU is introduced as one link between operational intelligence, Ultra, submarine tracking, and convoy defense.

Secrecy and popular culture made intelligence analysis and tactical staff work harder to remember than combat at sea.

The Atlantic problem was also a race to build escorts for vulnerable coastal and ocean convoys.

The Admiralty Submarine Tracking Room combined reports and Ultra to route convoys and estimate U-boat capability.

A German-speaking barrister became a leading U-boat analyst, directed the tracking room, and helped advocate convoys in the United States.

Winn wanted WATU to move beyond reacting to past attacks by gaming plausible future situations and codifying conditional responses.

Formed in January 1942, WATU used repeated war games to turn tactical hypotheses into reliable doctrine.

Roberts's sea and wargaming experience joined Wrens selected for mathematics, plotting, signals, and team tactics.

After Janet O'Call outplayed Max Horton five times, he investigated her method and required escort-group leaders to learn it.

Sparse diaries and destroyed family papers make the unit's daily pressures and participants' experiences difficult to reconstruct.

WATU's markers, chalk plot, and restricted viewing made commanders work with the incomplete information of convoy warfare.

Raspberry responded to a night U-boat infiltration by converging escorts and lighting the convoy's outer waters.

WATU used different immediate escort responses when a torpedoing suggested a wolf pack or a lone U-boat.

Beta improved on Alpha by encouraging a submerged U-boat onto a predicted escape line before the escort searched it.

WATU developed a maneuver for slower escorts confronting T5 acoustic torpedoes without Foxer decoys.

Photographs in Simon Parkin's account show the Wrens running floor games and Roberts explaining operations.

It depends on your strengths and learning style: compare giving instructions on a screen with moving markers across a physical plot.