War Gamers - Heldinnen der Royal Navy

I was glued to this drama documentary about the Battle of the Atlantic and the contribution of the too often uncelebrated women who contributed to winning the one battle that threatened the Western Allies chances of success. Well dramatised, great script and a very good cast. It loses one star for the modern penchant of programme makers to insult the intelligence by constant recaps and repetitive sections. The story however enfolds well and sucks you into wanting to binge to the end of the story. It is a story of the tussle between the Western Allies led by Royal Navy leadership and the German Navy led by Doenitz. The ingenuity of the backroom staff in wargaming and analysis was a key to the winning of the battle. As interesting as the Bletchley Park story.

It was interesting to see the different strategies evolve. The wolf pack of U-boats would have been impossible to counter without good strategies. The women at WATU (Western Approaches Tactical Unit) used their analytical skills to simulate U-Boat movements and develop effective anti-submarine tactics.

However, while the expertise and efforts of war gamers and experienced naval staff were vital components of the Allied effort against the U-boats, the decryption of Enigma messages provided the intelligence necessary to effectively counter the U-boat threat and ultimately contributed significantly to the Allies' success in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Given the importance of decrypted Enigma information in the Battle of the Atlantic, it's likely that a series like "U-boat Wargamers" should account for the role of Bletchley Park in providing intelligence to Allied forces. The decrypted Enigma messages provided crucial insights into German U-boat movements, tactics, and plans, enabling Allied naval forces to better anticipate and counter the U-boat threat.

Although U-Boat Wargamers doesn't delve into Bletchley Park specifically, it underscores the importance of intelligence and strategic thinking in countering U-Boat attacks. The WRENS, alongside their colleagues, contributed to the development of tactics that outwitted U-Boat wolfpacks.

This is a docudrama that seems to have just the right amount of drama punctuated by the historians' commentaries.

Seasoned actor Andrew Havill, plays the lead character, Captain Gilbert Roberts. Although Havill plays the lead role, Molly Vevers as Jean Laidlaw was outstanding. I'd like to see her in other programs.

I would have liked to have heard more about how the introduction of long range bomber support affected the success of convoys and if they changed how or when the WATU tactics were used. The other actresses playing WRENs were also excellent.

I binge watched all episodes in one evening. I was able to do this because I had saved the recordings of all episodes. I was thus able to skip past the repeated scenes at the beginning of each episode.

The underlying story presented is really interesting, fascinating in fact, and it was refreshing to find a TV programme cover this subject matter.

However, the dramatizations are truly awful. The casting is so poor, most of the main cast are not believable in their roles: the Royal Navy senior officers are ridiculous cliches of angry martinets, while the captains of the escort ships are really unbelievable as people in a position of authority, but especially as Royal Navy captains of the Second World War. And the bloke playing Dönitz was laughable: he was like a little child playing a board game moving his oversized toy subs around a tiny map of the North Atlantic. Whoever was in charge of casting was either poor at the job or hamstrung by a small budget. The dialogue is terrible, unbelievable, third rate at best.

The chap who played Capt. Roberts however was good though, although I recognise his from a few tv productions, so perhaps most the budget went on his fee.

The contribution, particularly of the WRENs, to this part of the war effort deserves recognition. It is an aspect of the war that is at least as important as the Battle of Britain. So this is a story worth telling.

I was initially frustrated the focus of the series, namely the war games, didn't appear until the middle episodes.

Stick with it and you get to understand how tactics evolved along with the contaxt, attitudes of the times and the opportunities missed by both sides along the way.

However, the human stories were worthy of inclusion and provided insight into a generation very different from now.