WATU - and programming AI

[Fidd]

"WATU" was a small handful of WRENS (female Royal Navy) who worked on the Western Approaches Tactical Unit. They collated observations from returning escort captains, as to what they'd seen U-boats doing, and then attempted to work out WHY the uboat was seen doing this or that before and after the attack. These hypotheses then became new tactics emanating from WATU. Escort captains were trained in these tactics with a crude form of wargame, where they could see the convoy, and surfaced u-boats if caught in illumination or radar, but not otherwise unless they detected a u-boat on asdic. This feedback loop saw a massive increase in u-boat losses after WATU was started. The girls also defeated the Lord Admiral, head of the Navy, in six consecutive wargames, where he played escort commander, and they the u-boats! Then he saw the new tactics used, with a rather better result. Much of the work was done by a young statistician called Jean Laidlaw.

You can read about WATU here. Note the very good and clear exposition of the manoeuvres that became doctrinal as escort evolutions in different circumstances. Such manoeuvres could be used as guides for the AI to follow? (seeming as AI is being reporgrammed?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wester..._Tactical_Unit

[Raf1394]

Never heard about it. Interesting to know