A chessboard model of the U-boat war in the Atlantic with applications to signals intelligence

This paper uses a simple Monte Carlo model to analyze the influence of signals intelligence on the Second World War's Battle of the Atlantic. The principal measure of effectiveness is the number of U-boat days of attack to which convoys were subjected. A secondary measure is the number of convoyed ships sunk. The model is validated against historical data and then used to explore the effectiveness of the two sides' signals intelligence. Allied use of signals intelligence is shown to have been capable of completely offsetting German use of signals intelligence, and then some.