Gilbert Roberts (Royal Navy officer)


Gilbert Howland Roberts was an officer in the British Royal Navy. From 1942 to 1943, Captain Roberts operated a naval wargaming unit based in Liverpool called the Western Approaches Tactical Unit. This unit developed anti-submarine tactics to defend trans-Atlantic merchant convoys from German submarines.

Military career

From 1935 to 1937, Roberts studied at the Portsmouth Tactical School. There, he discovered naval wargaming, and became an enthusiastic practitioner. Like many wargaming enthusiasts of his time, he developed his own rules, based mainly on the wargames of Fred T. Jane.
Roberts was given command of the destroyer HMS Fearless in autumn 1937. In December, the Fearless joined a flotilla to patrol the Spanish coast. In late 1938 he developed tuberculosis. He was deemed medically unfit and retired on 28 October 1938.
Roberts convalesced at the King Edward VII Sanatorium in Midhurst until April 1939.
On 1 January 1942, Roberts met with Admiral Cecil Usborne in London. Usborne ordered Roberts to report to the Western Approaches headquarters in Liverpool, where he was to establish a unit to develop tactics by which shipping convoys in the Atlantic could defend themselves from German submarine attacks. Through the use of wargames, he studied the reports of convoy escorts, devised defensive tactics, and trained escort commanders in their use.
In 1944, Roberts was tasked with planning the anti-submarine operations that supported Operation Overlord. These proved highly effective.
The Germans hung a photograph of him in the Operations Room of their U-boat Headquarters in Flensburg, with the caption: "This is your enemy, Captain Roberts, Director of Anti U-boat Tactics".

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Footnotes