Rodger Winn Sir Charles Rodger Noel Winn , CB , OBE , QC , ( 1903 – 1972 ) was a British judge and Royal Navy intelligence officer who led the tracking of German U - boat operations during World War II . Early life . Winn suffered from polio as a child , leaving him with crippled legs and a stooped posture . Notwithstanding his disability , he obtained degrees from Trinity College , Cambridge and Harvard Universities . He was called to the Bar in 1928 . War service . At the outbreak of war in 1939 , Winn volunteered for service as an interrogator of German prisoners . But he was soon assigned to the Admiralty ' s Submarine Tracking Room ( part of the Operational Intelligence Centre - OIC ) , although he was still a civilian . Though new to the naval environment , he quickly came to understand U - boat tactics , and could frequently predict their actions . As a result , he was promoted to command the Tracking Room , as a temporary Commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve . It is a measure of his ability that he received this rank and position without formal naval officer training , which was unprecedented at the time , and that he displaced his former superior . Winn ' s advancement was no surprise to his colleagues and he extended his influence within the OIC . During the German attacks on shipping off the U . S . coast , Winn was sent to America to put the British case . His arguments and expertise proved effective ; he managed to persuade Admiral Ernest King ( the formidable USN commander in chief ) , to implement a convoy system . Winn was a keen student of ULTRA intelligence . From ULTRA and his observations of U - boat movements , he deduced that German codebreakers had cracked the BAMS ( Broadcast to Allied Merchant Ships ) code used by the Admiralty for convoy operations . In 1943 he eventually convinced the Admiralty to make the necessary revisions to BAMS . After the war , captured records showed that the German Navy ' s " Beobachtungsdienst " ( Signals Intelligence Service ) had been reading BAMS since the start of the conflict . In 1944 , the Germans equipped the U - boats with snorkels , so that they could operate without surfacing . It was still extremely difficult for a U - boat to navigate without surfacing . But U - boats operating in the dangerous waters south of Ireland managed anyway . Winn guessed that they were using their depth sounders to locate and fix on a particular conical seamount . He arranged for a double agent to send a bogus message , warning the Germans of a new British minefield " where [ the U - boats ] go to fix their position . " The Germans soon declared a zone 60 miles square , prohibited to U - boats and centered on that seamount . Winn ' s war - time work was crucial to the Allied success in the Battle of the Atlantic . Without this success , Britain might have been forced out of the war . By the war ' s end , Winn attained the rank of Captain . His reputation and influence extended to the United States , where his Tracking Room was the model for a similar facility . He received an OBE in 1943 , and the American Legion of Merit in 1945 . Post - war career . Winn returned to the Bar after the war . He became a judge in 1959 . In 1965 , he became a Lord Justice of Appeal , sitting on England ' s second highest court . He also served on several important official and legal committees . Rodger Winn died on 4 June 1972 .