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Gilbert Roberts and his team were certainly innovative and influential, many of the tactics they developed in Derby House still appear in Naval Anti submarine tactical doctrine to this day, many of the plans for dealing with hostile submarines still carry many of the odd 'fruit' names although they now have numbers too and are categorised into either an ASW Attack, Support or Search plan.
It should be said that many of the plans WATU developed were later refined / modified at sea by the Escort commanders who were hunting then sinking the Uboats.
When I was being taught ASW at the Maritime Warfare Centre in Portsmouth, my boss WO Andy Richards gifted me the book - "Captain Gilbert Roberts R.N. and the Anti-U-Boat School", I still have it in my collection today and it is well worth a read alongside a book about WATU "A Game of Birds and Wolves".
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“Sailors, with their built in sense of order, service and discipline, should really be running the world.”
Nicholas Monsarrat
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