Original subtitles

- ONS-5. One of the largest single convoys ever undertaken.

- Fire torpedo tubes! One, two and four!

- Donitz's fleet is expanding. He will not rest till he's sent

every convoy ship to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

- 41 U-boats. A wolf pack like we've never seen before.

- Ladies, remember, every one of you

plays an essential part, never forget that.

- Don't overestimate your opponent.

Strike him dead.

- Escort ships half-Raspberry, half-Raspberry!

CREW MEMBER: Half-Raspberry, half-Raspberry!

- We're dealing with a new weapon. Come on, ladies, think.

- Your men have forced their way into my operations room

and now you expect me to talk to you.

- The breakthrough we've waited for. - There's no going back.

NARRATOR: Ten days into its journey to Canada,

convoy ONS-5 has been battered and dispersed by gale force winds.

As the storm passes, the largest wolf pack

of the Second World War begins to stalk the convoy.

Following the departure of Commander Peter Gretton

to refuel in Newfoundland, Admiral Horton assesses the damage.

- We got Gretton's report.

Before detaching, he said he could only account for 32 ships.

- That leaves what? - Nine or ten.

- God knows where they are.

Scattered all over the ocean for now probably.

And he's sent another escort

- to assemble them. - Till further information,

shall I put the stragglers

- here at stern? - Hm.

No air cover and down to seven escorts.

I hope this new man Sherwood is up to it.

NARRATOR: Following Gretton's departure, Robert Sherwood,

Lieutenant Commander of HMS Tay, is now in charge

of the stricken convoy.

- They’re sitting ducks out there! Bobbing around like corks!

We need to start rounding them up as soon as we can.

- Sherwood is now your number one man,

he's the commander in charge, But lo and behold, there he is,

- literally in the eye of the storm. - Multiple intercepts, port bow,

port quarter, starboard beam, starboard quarter. About 20 U-boats.

- This is the crisis, because this is the point

when the maximum number of U-boats are engaged

and the escorts are reduced.

- Prepare for contact.

Prepare for contact! Prepare for contact!

- The Germans can exploit gaps in the defences

and maximise the number of kills they make on the convoy.

- You, here!

- In spring 1943, after the German army's defeat

at the Battle of Stalingrad, Donitz is still gaining successes

in terms of sinking enemy vessels.

So strong hopes lie from the side of Hitler on Donitz

to be one of the men who is still able to win the war for Germany.

- What he really wanted to do was wipe out a convoy altogether,

to demonstrate to the Allies

that they could not venture onto this ocean,

that that convoy could lose every ship in it, that was his goal.

NARRATOR: Due to an intelligence blackout,

the Allies are unaware of the unprecedented scale

of the wolf pack that Karl Donitz is assembling.

- We're covering 400 miles, west-northwest to east-southeast.

41 U-boats, a wolf pack like we've never seen before.

- We're getting sightings, ships drifting miles from the escorts.

- What are they waiting for? Message!

You are better placed than you ever were before.

I am certain that you will fight with everything you've got.

Don't overestimate your opponent. Strike him dead.

NARRATOR: Six miles behind the convoy,

a straggling merchant ship is spotted by U-boat 707.

SHERWOOD: Fire torpedo tubes! One, two and four!

- Donitz has made many promises to the Fuhrer

and now that he holds that rank,

he has to prove the German Navy can deliver a victory.

Donitz by this stage of the war is aware that this is a duel

between him and Western Approaches command.

- So many stragglers. Miles away from the convoy.

There could be strikes Sherwood doesn't know about,

- ships that have already gone. - We have to focus on what we know

for now. Sherwood has done our course, he'll know what to do.

- Will he? It's that simple, is it?

- Did I say it was simple? - It's one thing to teach them here,

in this little room, quite another out there.

If we don't get results soon, if we don't prove our worth,

- we may as well pack our bags. - We will prove our worth, sir.

- I wish I had your confidence, Laidlaw.

- It's not confidence, sir, it's determination.

- I'm just expressing a reasonable concern.

If we don't do that, complacency sets in.

- If you're saying I am complacent, then you are mistaken.

I am determined not to feel defeated.

Now can I have the convoy report, please?

- For Roberts and Laidlaw, the pressure is on,

because they're just hoping that when the weather improves

and the U-boats do start really circling

that the WATU tactics kick in,

that they'll be able to show once and for all that they work.

NARRATOR: As the convoy travels into the black pit,

where there is no Allied air cover,

the wolf pack begins to penetrate the screen of escorts.

- This is a crucial phase and this is where

the convoy escort commander comes into his own.

- Message from Admiralty.

Heavy and continuous traffic in all directions.

- One of the key benefits of wargaming

is that it allows officers to practise

and create a sort of muscle memory

about responses to different scenarios.

They just do it intuitively.

- Convoy full steam ahead.

Loosestrife, proceed to stern

and assist Northern Spray with the survivors.

NARRATOR: Three merchant ships are torpedoed at close range,

all sinking within 19 minutes of each other.

- They’re in columns one and two. Escort ships, half-Raspberry!

- Half Raspberry! - CREW MEMBER: Half Raspberry!

- Half Raspberry. Similar to Raspberry.

However some escorts are held back at the group commander's discretion

to protect the convoy,

whilst the other escorts hunt for U-boats.

- Half Raspberry is the brainchild of Jean Laidlaw, as was Raspberry.

She's our statistician,

she's one of our pioneering female accountants,

and she's someone who is quite literally

taking the fight to Hitler via our escort commander, Sherwood,

who's falling back on a plan designed by a woman.

I bet she burned the candle at both ends

looking at those fresh statistics. How do you confront

eight wolf packs? How do you confront an enemy

that's 30-plus U-boats-strong.

This is a totally different fight.

NARRATOR: Once the escort ships are in a half-Raspberry formation,

a pattern of depth charges are fired.

- And this tactic, the thing that he'd learnt from WATU,

they've no way of knowing

if those depths charges were successful or not,

they can only hope that they can continue in safety.

NARRATOR: In Belfast Castle, Christian Oldham,

awaiting news of her fiance John Lamb,

refuses to leave the plotting room.

- It was the only place that you could have any contact

with what was happening to John.

So naturally I needed to stay there,

and although they tried to persuade me to,

I’d probably lay down on the chair or something, but, you know,

there was no way that I could leave the plot

until the battle was decided.

NARRATOR: Christian doesn't yet know that HMS Oribi is about to play

a key part in the most important sea battle of the second World War.

(sonar pinging)

- ASDIC contact 1200 yards.

- Around midnight, the Oribi, which is

one of Horton's support ships that has come to rescue this convoy,

gets an ASDIC ping on a U-boat and it goes in pursuit.

- And John was woken up by a huge bang,

which he thought was them going aground.

They couldn't possibly be going aground, he realised,

they were right out in the middle of the ocean.

He realised it couldn't be that. What could it be?

In two seconds, he was back on the bridge,

and there he found that his ship had rammed the U-boat...

(huge thud)

- ...and was actually lying on top of it,

so that he could then see the extraordinary sights going on.

NARRATOR: As HMS Oribi heads to Newfoundland to refuel,

the whole of the U-boat crew is left to perish.

- During the Battle of the Atlantic, on both sides,

a process of brutalisation took place

and this led to incidents where,

contrary to the laws of the sea

and also international law, survivors were not picked up.

- There is chaos, there is the sound of depth charges going off,

ships that have been struck, and there are flames

visible in the darkness, silhouetting the other vessels

around them, making them increasingly at risk

of a torpedo attack. They're now perfectly in target,

silhouetted for the U-boats.

In addition, there are escorts racing from point to point,

following tactics defined by the escort commander,

and the U-boats hovering on the periphery,

looking for an opportunity to work their way

through to the convoy, to target their victim.

- Torpedo fire, column two.

Golias is hit. Artichoke.

Artichoke.

(gulls crying)

- Wake up.

Come on. Let's be having you.

From Sherwood.

24 attacks were attempted on the convoy during the night.

All repulsed.

Five U-boats sunk.

Vidette claims hits.

Loosestrife depth-charged the U-boats which surfaced

and blew up. Sunflower has one depth charge remaining.

Sunflower rammed one. Snowflake destroyed one by depth charge...

...and Oribi rammed one.

Well done, all of you. Thank you.

Well done.

Well, as you were.

- They would have been absolutely thrilled

and delighted if they'd even managed to sink one,

but to sink five U-boats means that the tactics

that they've put in place are clearly working,

and what it really means in the overall war for the Atlantic

and to Donitz is that everything is changing now.

It's just so important and it means an enormous amount

to the entire team of the WRENS at Western Approaches.

- Jean.

(panting) It was quite a night.

- Well, can I take heart?

- That is your prerogative. All I can say

is that I think that there will be a lot more food on our plates soon.

- Did they use our tactics? Do we know?

(breathes heavily)

- I believe so. - Were any U-boat strikes?

- Five, can you believe it?

(gasps)

And to think we used to count ourselves lucky

if we managed to sink one!

- Indeed.

- How many ships were lost?

- 13, I'm afraid.

- Five U-boats to 13 ships, that's an unsustainable ratio.

Donitz can't keep going on like that, can he?

- Absolutely not.

His fleet would be wiped out in a matter of months.

He's outmanoeuvred. Our technology and our tactics

have outwitted him.

- I always knew they would.

The breakthrough we've been waiting for.

- There's no going back.

- Complacency, Gilbert?

- Touche.

- We never know what Donitz has up his sleeve, but for now I think

this deserves a celebration.

Would you care to join me for a cup of warm tea

and a stale scone, sir?

- Don't mind if I do, Laidlaw.

Might even eat one of the darned things this time.

- This is vindication for Roberts and Laidlaw, entirely.

Their tactics are not only working,

they're working in the most difficult conditions

against ridiculous numbers of boats, under constant attack.

They must have felt elated.

- It means that tonnage isn't disappearing,

it means goods, fuel, food are coming back into England.

It means that people's lives are being saved.

All of a sudden, Donitz is on the run.

Donitz is summoned to the Wolf's Lair,

the Wolfsschanze, Hitler's HQ on the eastern front.

HITLER: You know what our people are calling that convoy?

- Hitler is furious, and he rants against Donitz: "How dare you?

You promised me these wolf packs were going to destroy

and decimate these Allied convoys. We were going to conquer Britain,

- and now what's happening?!" - It is not our tactics that failed.

That would be to ignore the real truth.

The enemy's new technology is making it impossible for us

in the Atlantic. Their new radar can find us in zero visibility.

In a fog we are fighting blind.

We have losses of 15 to 20 boats a month.

- War is a numbers game, the bottom line,

you've got to have the statistics on your side, and what we see

is quite literally the tide turning

in May of 1943.

We have an unsustainable level

of U-boat losses.

- It's not defeat. We withdraw, we regroup,

we develop the REN and when we are ready,

we go back to the Atlantic. We will prevail.

NARRATOR: The REN, a new weapon that Donitz has been developing

since the beginning of the war, is about to be launched.

- Hitler believes other weapons, his so-called wonder weapons,

will attain the victory, and merely slightly improving a U-boat

isn't as exciting as the new weapons that he's looking at,

the new weapons that promise victory.

- Donitz has gone through, really, this incredible fall from grace,

March, riding high, now by May it's all over.

He starts to withdraw his U-boats to the Azores

because there's no point in keeping them in the Atlantic

any longer. This is known in Germany as Schwarzer Mai,

Black May.

This is where Peter Gretton, the former commander of OMS-5,

comes back into the story.

He is returning from St John's, Newfoundland.

They call a WATU tactic Observant,

and because of this a U-boat is sunk,

and one of the victims of that sinking

is actually Karl Donitz's son, who dies in the attack.

- Actually, Donitz lost his two sons,

who were also naval officers, in action.

I certainly believe that he felt grief

and there was a big loss for him, but it did not affect him

as a naval officer and as a professional soldier.

It was very similar to the British approach

of keeping a stiff upper lip.

NARRATOR: Following the relocation of Donitz's U-boats to the Azores,

the Allies are now able to transport vast amounts of supplies and troops

across the North Atlantic .

- And of course this allows Britain and America

to plan the re-invasion of Europe. They can push the Nazis back now,

once they get all their supplies.

NARRATOR: But the Battle of the Atlantic isn't over

and the work of the WRENS is not yet done.

- I was working in Whitehall, I had a little office

below the stairs all to myself,

and the walls of the office were all covered

in huge scale maps of northern France,

which was where we were about to have our great battle,

which was going to be called D-Day.

My job was to draw a map of every compass bearing

on that particular point,

so that any captain of a ship who was intending to invade

from that point would be able to identify exactly where he was,

and so that was my job, which was quite interesting,

and extremely secret, of course.

NARRATOR: The date and location of D-Day

are known only to the very top of Allied command.

But it is an open secret on both sides of the Atlantic

that preparations are underway.

- It's strategy now, stealth, cunning, this.

When they come, we'll be ready. The German spirit won't be defeated.

I know what we have to do.

- The problem is, Donitz has a surprise up his sleeve.

The question is, can they work out what it is

before a catastrophe happens?

NARRATOR: September 1943, four months after ONS-5,

two convoys delayed by poor weather come under ferocious U-boat attack.

- Roberts, come and see this.

They're going for our escorts, two so far.

- One could be a misfire, two, that's intentional.

- They seem to be goading us to go for them

and then when we line them up,

the stern of the escort is blown.

- We always knew he'd come back at us.

It was just a question of time.

- And now the Germans have thought of their own tactics,

they've got this new weapon and they're not using them

against the merchant ships, but against the escort ships,

and that is a big change. Now it's aggressor against aggressor.

- I know some of you have loved ones and friends in the two convoys

that are under attack tonight.

All the more reason for us to focus now on how we stop them.

- There's a difference with this attack,

a crucial difference, it marks a change of strategy.

It's not the merchant ships Donitz is targeting first any more,

it's the escorts.

- The U-boats seem to be goading our escorts to engage

and then they're struck astern.

- The U-boat begins to dive only when the escort closes in.

Why might that be?

Come on ladies, think.

- Sound. They need our ships to move.

- Good. It needs the sound of our escort's propellor

to find its target.

- We're dealing with a new weapon, the German Navy acoustic torpedo.

- And we need to work out a new tactic to stop it.

- This is exactly the point of WATU.

Something weird happens, tell WATU.

They will go away and think about it

and explore the options.

NARRATOR: Roberts and Laidlaw know that the acoustic torpedo

targets the loudest sound, the twin propellers of the escort ships.

- So they look at how these acoustic torpedoes are working

and they find out some key points.

Firstly, the U-boat wants the escort ship

coming towards them so they can fire the acoustic torpedo.

And that is when you turn your ship and you go in the other direction.

The acoustic torpedoes will miss you.

That's when you turn back on the U-boat and you go full pelt

and you ram it.

- So that's how it works.

We should think of a code name.

- Please not another fruit.

NARRATOR: The new tactic, code named Step Aside,

- works on three principles. - You evade, you detect, you attack.

- What is it? - Evade, detect, attack.

- Step Aside is used for the rest of the war,

and continues to be used by NATO after the war,

and this is the ultimate accolade for WATU's ability to develop

new and original effective tactics against submarines.

NARRATOR: Whilst the war still rages,

Christian Oldham is reunited with her fiance briefly

on his return from the battle.

In December 1943, they meet up for the third time.

To be married.

- It was a very good party, and then we were lent a baby Austin,

which we drove to the Savoy Hotel as part of our honeymoon.

It was all great fun. It was really such a splendid idea

to be able to get married and rush off and drive by car,

just ourselves, without anyone else. It was very good, enjoyed ourselves.

- Ah.

I have news. I've received a letter.

- You have? That's... good.

- Not just any letter.

I'm to be honoured.

Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

CBE.

- That's marvellous!

- And there's another thing.

I wondered... would you accompany me to the Palace?

- Oh.

- I couldn't have done it without you.

- Of course.

- Thank you.

- Splendid. - Mm.

- None of the women of WATU received any honours,

not even Jean Laidlaw, who was almost equal

to Gilbert Roberts in her efforts at devising these war games.

- It's really very moving

to look at the history of the WRENS at Western Approaches.

The contribution that they made, the sacrifices

that each of them made in their own personal lives,

and they really did do an enormous amount, actually,

to help win the Battle of the Atlantic.

None of them were ever honoured officially.

NARRATOR: As D-Day gets closer, one of the few people

to be involved in the highly secretive planning

is Gilbert Roberts.

- Sir.

- There was a genuine concern if Donitz understood

that there'd be large ships manoeuvring in position.

If a U-boat gets amongst those it is going to kill

thousands of troops, or destroy hundreds of tanks.

- I've just got back from London.

We'll be teaching a new course,

three days, to include tactics on patrols in shallow water,

escort duty of unusual objects, attacks in confined waters.

- Tactics that could be deployed, say, in a water-based invasion.

- It is not our place to speculate or share our speculations, Jean.

- Talk is cheap.

- Yes, sir.

- Donitz is still out there. Let's focus on that.

- Of course. What can I do?

- And in fact when the monarch himself is informed

that WATU has been tasked with this,

he actually states to Roberts that his confidence is now complete.

He is more than sure the U-boats won't get to the invasion fleet.

ARCHIVE ANNOUNCER: D-Day has come. Early this morning

the Allies began the assault on the northwestern face

of Hitler's European fortress.

- I heard it on the radio. I was more than frightfully excited,

I can tell you. I didn't know whether they ever used my maps,

but they had them anyway.

(explosion)

- D Day was the largest amphibious operation

in the history of the world. Tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands of men and even more importantly

their supplies, the trucks, the jeeps, the tanks,

that had to get across the Channel, the food to feed them.

- I think we all felt enormous relief,

not least for our Free French friends,

that at least Europe was going to be freed.

We always had absolute confidence that that would be the conclusion.

- It was the most wonderful moment of my life.

NARRATOR: Misled by the Allies to believe that D-Day

is going to happen near Calais, the Germans are totally unprepared

for the landings in Normandy.

- Donitz is absolutely shocked. So what does he do?

He goes in for a sort of reckless, strange order to his men.

- Every enemy vessel is a target. It is to be attacked.

Even if this carries the risk of...

...loss... of one's own life.

- Many U-boat captains see the order as a kind of a suicide mission.

It is like Donitz is kind of saying,

"I even sacrificed my sons on the altar of the Fatherland

so I'm not expecting something from my crews

or from my commanders that I wouldn't do myself."

NARRATOR: Only 35 U-boats scramble to Normandy.

Deterred by WATU tactics, and the vast invading force,

they sink only 23 Allied vessels.

- It is my belief that if WATU had not been deterring U-boats

through the deployment of escorts, the use of mines et cetera,

that there would have been probably major attacks on the fleet,

Even though there were few U-boats, this was the decisive battle.

The Germans would have taken every risk

if they had a chance of disrupting that invasion.

- And in the end, five U-boats limp back to their ports.

This is a terrible, terrible blow for Donitz.

Once the high mighty admiral of the German Navy,

he now has five U-boats back from the Normandy landings.

(car horn, tram bell)

(bell dings)

- Night, ladies. - Oh, night.

- Speech? - Yeah, speech!

- No, no. I will leave that to the admirals.

But I will say this.

We may not be awarded CBEs,

but we are honoured to have served our country.

Every one of us has helped to save fathers, sons,

brothers, uncles,

sweethearts.

And if you don't believe me, here, look at this.

Ta-ra...!

- Ooh! - (laughs)

Look who it is. Captain Roberts.

June, you're the performer, you should read it.

- Yes, here it is.

"So thorough is the course, so clever the setting of each game,

that many naval officers fighting actual U-boats in the Atlantic

suddenly realised that they first saw the same situation

present itself when it was only a game on a make-believe ocean."

- But isn't it a little strange to be putting it in a magazine,

giving the game away, excuse the pun,

when the war's not even finished?

- It is strange, but... it must have been cleared for publication.

They must want the Germans to know about us,

in case they start again.

- We call it today an information campaign,

that is where you put a message out which is designed

to influence your adversary's thinking, to deter them

from action, or to confine their thinking,

to concern them, to add an element of risk to their decision-making.

- I know you’re too modest to think this, June,

but you really should think about modelling, or acting

when this is all over, everyone says it.

- You should, it'd be a waste of that beautiful face if you didn't.

- What about you, Jean? Will you go back to the accountancy?

- If they'll have me, a mere woman.

- Yeah. I mean you only helped win the Battle of the Atlantic,

so... Not that we can tell anyone it was us.

- Good girls, polite girls, didn't show off,

heavens above, no. That's not what women in the 1940s

were encouraged to do, so the WRENS, that crucial crack team

in WATU at the top of Derby House,

didn't leave much of a paper trail.

- Well, cheers to us.

- Cheers. - Cheers...!

Yeah...!

NARRATOR: As the Allies push through Nazi-occupied Europe.

Karl Donitz's life takes a bizarre twist.

- On the 29th of April 1945,

Berlin has been under siege by the Soviets,

and they are desperate at this point.

There are children with guns in the streets,

trying to defend the city and they just can't.

Hitler knows this and he gives up, he commits suicide.

But before doing this, he names his successor.

And that is... Donitz.

- Donitz had once seen himself as one of the sort of saviours

of Germany, along with Hitler. They were going to create

this sort of brave new German Reich.

(chair scrapes)

- And there he is, he's the one who's responsible

for signing the unconditional surrender of Germany

at the end of World War Two...

- Enter.

- ...for this lowest point, really, in German history.

NARRATOR: Overseeing the unconditional surrender

of Germany, Donitz betrays Hitler and the Reich,

but his leadership is in name only.

After 23 days he is arrested by the Allies

and charged with war crimes.

- Thank you.

NARRATOR: But before Donitz's fate is sealed by the Allies,

Gilbert Roberts faces one final challenge.

- On the 23rd of May 1945,

Gilbert Roberts is asked to go to Flinsberg.

And who is in Flinsberg?

- Good afternoon, Admiral.

I am on Admiral Sir Max Horton's staff.

I'm here to gather information about German U-boat practice.

- As Fuhrer, I have a number of duties to perform in Luxembourg.

- Very well. I will not keep you.

- One can only imagine this encounter between these two men

who for years have been locked in a deathly struggle

for mastery over the Atlantic, and yet there they are,

in these peaceful surroundings at the end of the war,

looking at one another and sizing one another up

and then finally having to say goodbye.

He comes across, ironically, a photograph of himself

which had been printed in a magazine, and it says,

"This is your enemy."

- Well, well, well... That's how he recognised me.

- Your men have forced their way into my operations room.

I've been waiting five hours in the parade ground.

They've broken into my cabin.

And now you expect me to talk to you.

(German)

- Admiral Godt, did you have a tactical unit

similar to that of WATU?

- No. No such need.

The men did all the tactical work on the North Atlantic.

It surprises me that women would be involved at this level,

especially when they had never seen battle.

- And it surprised Godt that women were given

such an important role in naval operations.

They did have the equivalent of WRENS in the German Navy,

but they weren't given anything like

the responsibilities of the women of Britain.

- Do you know any of our tactics?

- Raspberry I have heard of. Very complicated but useful,

if all the escorts acted according to the stated plan.

- This is so amazing, because of course

it brings this whole story back to Jean Laidlaw,

who named this tactic Raspberry as a kind of raspberry to Hitler.

- Thank you.

NARRATOR: Unbeknown to Godt,

a second recorder secreted in a suitcase is recording,

even when Roberts' recorder is switched off.

- So why in your opinion did the U-boats not prevail?

- Detection technology.

Your radar meant we would not operate economically on the surface.

- Anything else?

- Superior training... of your escorts.

- And our tactics, did they play a part in our victory?

I noticed the photograph.

- Perhaps.

- The information gained by Roberts from Godt is a real vindication

for Jean Laidlaw. She managed to get into the brains of U-boat captains.

She understood their tactics

just from her wargaming strategies.

It was an amazing vindication for her and everybody at WATU.

NARRATOR: For his war efforts, Karl Donitz is tried

along with other top-ranking Nazis, in Nuremberg.

- Donitz denies any knowledge of the Holocaust,

even though he's known to be a virulent anti-Semite.

He's a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of Hitler

and Hitler's war aims and yet he manages

at the Nuremberg trials to present himself

as something different.

NARRATOR: Donitz is accused of breaking international naval law

by not rescuing enemy survivors.

But his lawyers force the court to recognise the same behaviour

in the Allied fleet.

As a result, Donitz avoids execution

and is sentenced to ten years in Spandau Jail.

- Fire.

NARRATOR: U-boat ace Otto Kretschmer is never charged with war crimes.

Resuming an illustrious naval career,

he rises to become Chief of Staff of the Baltic Naval Command

and is featured in the '90s computer game Aces of the Deep.

GAMING VOICEOVER: Smoke on horizon, Captain!

(OTTO KRETSCHMER, ARCHIVE) It was, sadly, easy for me

to penetrate the screen of the escort

and getting into the convoy proper.

- You know, their aces lacked one quality that you have

in abundance.

Imagination.

- I've never seen myself like that.

- You put yourself into the mind of our enemies,

in the middle of a convoy, and the chaos.

Engines silenced for the danger to pass.

It was you who insisted that was their modus operandi and it was.

Admiral Godt confirmed it.

- Well, thank you,

but it was the team effort.

- It was.

But we couldn't have done it without you.

- Likewise.

- Laidlaw. - Sir.

Sir.

Do you mind?

- I will look the other way.

ROBERTS' VOICEOVER: The Battle of the Atlantic is against

our two great enemies...

...the U-boat and the cruel sea.

LAIDLAW: We will prevail. I know we will.

ROBERTS: Well done, Laidlaw.

NARRATOR: After years of ill health, and campaigning

for arthritis charities,

Gilbert Roberts CBE dies in 1986.

- I find this story tremendously moving, it's inspirational,

it's just a symbol of what women were capable of if given the chance,

even in the dire circumstances of the Second World War.

So really their story should be celebrated, should be written large,

and should be really commemorated as much as possible.

NARRATOR: After the war, Jean Laidlaw resumes her career

as an accountant and lives quietly with her partner Beryl

until her death in 2008.

ROBERTS: So meet WREN rating Janet Okell,

the woman who beat you five-nil.

NARRATOR: Janet Okell returns to her old life near Liverpool.

She dies in 2005, less than ten miles

from the Western Approaches tactical unit.

- Never surrender. - Never surrender.

NARRATOR: June Duncan enjoys a successful career

as a top model and actor,

later becoming the Assistant Editor of Harper's Bazaar.

In 1945, Vera Lawton Matthews, wartime director of the WRENS...

- I've got a secret little plan. - NARRATOR: ...is made a Dame.

She dies aged 71 in 1951.

What have I done, you may ask,

compared to what my boy has to put up with,

dodging submarines in the Atlantic?

When I have talked with women, how often when I admired their pluck

have I heard them say "Oh, well,

it's not much. I'm just doing my best to help us win the war.".

NARRATOR: The WATU WRENS may not have received any honours,

nor did they publish their memoirs,

but they did something far more important.

They recaptured the savage waves of the Atlantic for the Allies

and so delivered them victory.

(stirring orchestral music)

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