Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine, Britain's

best-selling history magazine. I'm Ellicothon. Today you'll hear another lecture from my 2019 history weekend event in Chester on an ingenious operation from the Second World War. and of Birds and Wolves. The book tells the story of a team that develop a battleship like

war game in order to crack German Newboat tactics at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic.

So yes, I'm going to talk to you about my new book and the story there in

When I was a child my brother and I spent our summer holidays at our grandparents' house in Devon.

They love board games and had an old wooden chest

that was filled with them.

One day, in amongst the boxes of Scrabble, Monopoly, Bagatel, we found a copy of battleships.

Now this wasn't the plasticky tabletop version with which I'm sure you're all familiar,

but a luxurious version of the game that was played out on a giant map that had to be

spread across the whole floor. We take turns to throw the dice and maneuver our ships into

opposing positions and then at the... the a bit like a miniature hockey puck. If your aim was true, the disc would slot into a hole at the

base of your target and then through some toy makers magic, the top of the ship would spring

into the air, a bit like a cap rocketing from a shaken bottle of lemonade.

My grandfather never spoke much about the war.

I knew that he had been a merchant seaman, but not when or where he had sailed or even if he had seen combat at sea.

As such I never put together why he might own this particular game or why he would often

watch from the doorway as we played.

A couple of years ago, I started working on a radio documentary

for the New Yorker on war gaming.

If you're not familiar, war gaming is a tool that's used

by politicians, civil servants servants and the military to explore

...