A Game of Birds and Wolves
The Secret Game That Won the War
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A Game of Birds and Wolves
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Narrated by:
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Elliot Fitzpatrick
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By:
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Simon Parkin
About this listen
1941. The Battle of the Atlantic is a disaster. Thousands of supply ships ferrying vital food and fuel from North America to Britain are being torpedoed by German U-boats.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill is lying to the country about the number of British ships sunk. He is lying about the number of British men killed. And worst of all, unless something changes, he knows that Britain is weeks away from being starved into surrender to the Nazis.
This is the story of the game of battleships that won the Second World War. In the first week of 1942 a group of unlikely heroes - a retired naval captain and a clutch of brilliant young women, the youngest only seventeen-years-old - gather to form a secret strategy unit. On the top floor of a bomb-bruised HQ in Liverpool, the Western Approaches Tactical Unit spends days and nights designing and playing wargames in an effort to crack the U-boat tactics.
A Game of Birds and Wolves takes us from the sweltering fug of a U-boat as the German aces coordinate their wolfpack, to the tense atmosphere of the operation room as the British team plot battles at sea on the map.
The story of Operation Raspberry and its unsung heroines has never been told before. Investigative journalist Simon Parkin brings these hidden figures into the light and shows the ingenuity, perseverance and love needed to defeat the Nazis in this gripping tale of war at sea.
©2019 Simon Parkin (P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
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- The Longest Continuous Military Campaign in World War Ii
- By: Richard Freeman
- Narrated by: Will Huggins
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
No other battle of the Second World War lasted longer than the 2,075 days of the Battle of the Atlantic. It raged from the opening day of the war in September 1939 until it ended almost six years later with Germany’s surrender in May 1945. Vital supplies of food, fuel, and the raw materials needed by the Allies to wage war had to be transported in merchant ships in escorted convoys across the Atlantic Ocean, where they were at the mercy of German U-boats and warships.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Slanted Badly
- By Christopher on 07-07-24
By: Richard Freeman
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Submarine Commander
- A Story of World War II and Korea
- By: Paul R. Schratz
- Narrated by: John N. Gully
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 147
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 135
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 134
A fascinating personal memoir of underwater combat in World War II, told by a man who played a major role in those dangerous operations. Frank and beautifully written, this book will be of lasting value as a submarine history by an expert and as an enduring military and political analysis.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engrossing Memoir
- By Jean on 12-24-15
By: Paul R. Schratz
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Dead Wake
- The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 14,017
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 12,449
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 12,426
On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Naivety VS Barbarians Of War
- By Sara on 03-05-16
By: Erik Larson
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Jutland
- The Unfinished Battle
- By: Nick Jellicoe
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
More than a century later, historians still argue about this controversial and misunderstood World War I naval battle off the coast of Denmark. It was the 20th century's first engagement of dreadnoughts - and while it left Britain in control of the North Sea, both sides claimed victory and decades of disputes followed. This book not only retells the story of the battle from both a British and German perspective based on the latest research, but also helps clarify the context of Germany's inevitable naval clash and the aftermath after the smoke had cleared.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well done
- By William on 03-30-20
By: Nick Jellicoe
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Sink ‘Em All
- Submarine Warfare in the Pacific
- By: Charles A. Lockwood
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 401
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 357
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 356
Sink 'Em All was originally published in 1951 by Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, the US Navy commander of the Pacific submarine fleet during World War II. Lockwood, in his leadership role, knew the skippers and crews of the submarines and retells their wartime successes and tragedies with an intimacy and realism often missing in second-hand accounts.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best of the best
- By Robert on 08-29-18
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Days of Steel Rain
- The Epic Story of a WWII Vengeance Ship in the Year of the Kamikaze
- By: Brent E. Jones
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story5 out of 5 stars 68
Sprawling across the Pacific, this untold story follows the crew of the newly-built "vengeance ship" USS Astoria, named for her sunken predecessor lost earlier in the war. At its center lies US Navy Captain George Dyer, who vowed to return to action after suffering a horrific wound. He accepted the ship's command in 1944, knowing it would be his last chance to avenge his injuries and salvage his career. Yet with the nation's resources and personnel stretched thin by the war, he found that just getting the ship into action would prove to be a battle.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Other Side of the Story: USS Astoria CL-90
- By Mike Williams on 11-16-21
By: Brent E. Jones
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Admiral Bill Halsey
- A Naval Life
- By: Thomas Alexander Hughes
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 183
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 164
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 164
William Halsey was the most famous naval officer of World War II. His fearlessness in carrier raids against Japan, his steely resolve at Guadalcanal, and his impulsive blunder at the Battle of Leyte Gulf made him the "Patton of the Pacific" and solidified his reputation as a decisive, aggressive fighter prone to impetuous errors of judgment in the heat of battle.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally a fair assessment
- By Stephen Breen on 06-28-20
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The Wolf
- How One German Raider Terrorized the Allies in the Most Epic Voyage of WWI
- By: Richard Guilliatt, Peter Hohnen
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
In 1916, a nondescript freighter left Germany carrying 465 submarine mines, 16 torpedoes, eight cannons, 1,400 shells, a seaplane, and 346 men who believed they were embarking on a suicide mission. That ship became known to Allied forces as the Wolf, and by the time it returned to Germany more than a year later, it was home to more than 800 men, women, and children from 25 different nations, including its own crew.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Too little sea action.
- By Joseph on 05-02-12
By: Richard Guilliatt, and others
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Operation Kronstadt
- The Greatest True Tale of Espionage to Come Out of the Early Years of MI6
- By: Harry Ferguson
- Narrated by: Gideon Emery
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 96
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
Part Blackhawk Down, part The Riddle of the Sands, former MI6 officer Harry Ferguson has written an extraordinarily gripping non-fiction thriller. Operation Kronstadt not only reveals the early days of intelligence services but also uncovers a truly dramatic story from the Russian Revolution involving a daring rescue attempt and a "mission impossible" against the best defended naval target in Russia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Gripping Story
- By Anonymous User on 06-21-10
By: Harry Ferguson
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Battleship Commander
- The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr.
- By: Paul Stillwell
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 95
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story5 out of 5 stars 81
Battleship Commander explores Lee's life from boyhood in Kentucky through his eventual service as commander of the fast battleships from 1942 to 1945. Said to be down to earth, modest, forgiving, friendly, and with a wry sense of humor, Lee eschewed the media and, to the extent possible, left administrative details to others.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An Unassuming Leader
- By D. Baker on 08-06-23
By: Paul Stillwell
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The Jersey Brothers
- A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home
- By: Sally Mott Freeman
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 533
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 481
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Story5 out of 5 stars 480
They are three brothers, all navy men, who end up coincidentally and extraordinarily at the epicenter of three of the war's most crucial moments. Bill is picked by Roosevelt to run his first map room in Washington. Benny is the gunnery and antiaircraft officer on the USS Enterprise, one of the only carriers to escape Pearl Harbor and by the end of 1942 the last one left in the Pacific to defend against the Japanese. Barton, the youngest and least distinguished of the three, is shuffled off to the Navy Supply Corps because his mother wants him out of harm's way.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brothers Unbroken
- By Gillian on 05-12-17
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The Mathews Men
- Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler's U-boats
- By: William Geroux
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 280
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 255
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 252
From the author of The Ghost Ships of Archangel, one of the last unheralded heroic stories of World War II: The U-boat assault off the American coast against the men of the US Merchant Marine who were supplying the European war, and one community’s monumental contribution to that effort. Mathews County, Virginia, is a remote outpost on the Chesapeake Bay with little to offer except unspoiled scenery - but it sent an unusually large concentration of sea captains to fight in World War II.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging Read Not About Brothers, but Men
- By Gillian on 04-22-16
By: William Geroux
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Unsinkable
- Five Men and the Indomitable Run of the USS Plunkett
- By: James Sullivan
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
In the best-selling tradition of Indianapolis and In Harm’s Way comes a “captivating...gripping” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) account of the USS Plunkett - a US Navy destroyer that sustained the most harrowing attack on any Navy ship by the Germans during World War II, later made famous by John Ford and Herman Wouk.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Poorly researched.
- By Kindle Customer on 02-05-21
By: James Sullivan
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War Beneath the Sea
- Submarine Conflict During World War II
- By: Peter Padfield
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 25 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 161
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
This riveting chronicle of submarine warfare is the first to cover all the major submarine campaigns of the war, describing, in detail, the operations of the British, American, Japanese, Italian, and German submarine and anti-submarine forces. Beginning with a vivid re-creation of the sinking of the passenger liner Athenia by a German U-boat in September 1939, critically acclaimed military historian Peter Padfield's compelling narrative casts an unflinching eye on the devastating consequences of maritime warfare.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fills in the gaps of other submarine books
- By Ben on 05-19-21
By: Peter Padfield
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Grey Wolves
- The U-Boat War 1939–1945
- By: Philip Kaplan
- Narrated by: A. T. Chandler
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 362
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 321
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Story4 out of 5 stars 319
In the early years of the Second World War, the elite force of German submariners known as the Ubootwaffe came perilously close to perfecting underwater battle tactics and successfully cutting Britain's transatlantic lifeline. To the Allies, these enemy sailors were embarking on a mission of unequivocal evil. Each member of the Ubootwaffe understood that he must take pride in being part of a unique brotherhood. He had to do so because he was setting out on a journey that would test his mental and physical endurance to the very limits, and which he had little chance of surviving.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Like a Jr High Book Report, Performance Bad Too
- By Bill Sayer on 12-03-15
By: Philip Kaplan
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Decision at Sea
- Five Naval Battles That Shaped American History
- By: Craig L. Symonds
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 79
Decision at Sea is a powerful and illuminating look at pivotal moments in the history of the Navy and of the United States. It is also a compelling study of the unchanging demands of leadership at sea, where commanders must make rapid decisions in the heat of battle with lives - and the fate of nations - hanging in the balance.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting book...but not great
- By Anonymous User on 11-22-20
By: Craig L. Symonds