Talk:Western Approaches Tactical Unit

Recommend adding links to this page from other articles about OR

I recommend adding a link to this article on WATU, from the article titled Operations_research, also know as OR, or operational research or operational analysis. This article on WATU is isolated. I found this article quite by chance, by looking for info on WATU, a term mentioned in YouTube videos by Lindybeige and Drachinifel, about the practical use of wargames. The videos are "The wargamers who won a real war" and "Western Approaches Command - Fighting U-Boats with Wrens".

That article on OR can be found at... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#Second_World_War This isolated article, titled "Western Approaches Tactical Unit" is an outstanding example of OR in the Second_World_War. Your informative wikipedia article about WATU should be tied in and linked with other wikipedia articles, about OR in the Second_World_War. I had never before seen this much information on the use of games to develop countermeasure to U-boat tactics. That is, the variety of tactics named raspberry, pineapple, and step-aside. These were developed using educated guesses and hypotheses, developed and tested in the war-games, and verified in real combat. Most sources dwell on the same straight-forward tactical question, how deep to set the depth-charge explosions?

It might help readers to link WATU to articles about Game Theory, since that technique was probably used by WATU, and is used in Operations Research (OR) in general.

It might help readers to link WATU to articles about Simulation, since that technique was definitely used by WATU, and is used in Operations Research (OR) in general.

The McNamara fallacy (also known as the quantitative fallacy[1]) could be linked, as a "see also" as an example of how and where OR can go wrong.

Another aspect of OR would be the Monty Hall problem or paradox.

This leads to another question... did the Axis powers have OR units? ...similar to WATU? ...or not? 108.84.121.79 (talk) 03:50, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Need for photo of Jean Laidlaw to be added to this article?

given her very significant roles? Asto77 (talk) 13:21, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

There's no good portrait of her to be found. Kurzon (talk) 21:09, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Not a portrait, but she is in this photo and identified in the IWM narrative that goes with it. Also, she may well be in this photo.

Primary sources

@Simon Harley: First off, The Atlantic Convoy Instructions is the only place you'll find accurate descriptions of the sub-hunting maneuvers. All the descriptions in secondary sources were wildly off. Wikipedia doesn't outright prohibit primary sources. It advises caution with them because they often don't present a good overview of the situation. But in this case we are looking for something very specific, and I think using original Royal Navy documentation is appropriate. Kurzon (talk) 16:08, 9 June 2025 (UTC)