War Gamers

U-Boat Wargamers tells the remarkable story of Gilbert Roberts, Jean Laidlaw and the Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS) – aka the ‘Wrens’ – as they use revolutionary war gaming tactics to defeat Admiral Karl Dönitz and his Wolf Pack fleets of U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II. The year is 1943 and Admiral Karl Dönitz - head of the Nazis’ U-boat fleet - has brought Britain to the brink of starvation by destroying their merchant ships. The Royal Navy turns to retired war gamer Gilbert Roberts, who needs to find a team, but the Navy can’t spare any men. Instead, he turns to the Women’s Royal Navy Service (WRNS) to war game the U-boats’ tactics. In partnership with Jean Laidlaw, one of Britain’s first female chartered accountants, and a small team of resourceful female mathematicians, they decipher Dönitz’s tactics and develop a method by which the Navy’s destroyers can infiltrate the Wolf Packs and pick off the U-boats one by one. The Wrens were some of the greatest war gamers of their generation, but their legacy has largely been ignored. Now the story of these forgotten war gamers can be told, in a premiere series narrated by Emmy and Bafta-winning actor Sir Derek Jacobi (I, Claudius, Hamlet, Gladiator). (History Channel)