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Monday, June 5, had long been planned for launching D-day, the start of the campaign to liberate Nazi-held Western Europe. Yet the fine weather leading up to the greatest invasion the world would ever see was deteriorating rapidly. Would it hold long enough for the bombers, the massed armada, and the soldiers to secure beachheads in Normandy? That was the question, and it was up to Ike’s chief meteorologist, James Martin Stagg, to give him the answer. On the night of June 4, the weather hung on a knife’s edge. The three weather bureaus advising Stagg—the US Army Air Force, the Royal Navy, and…mehr
Monday, June 5, had long been planned for launching D-day, the start of the campaign to liberate Nazi-held Western Europe. Yet the fine weather leading up to the greatest invasion the world would ever see was deteriorating rapidly. Would it hold long enough for the bombers, the massed armada, and the soldiers to secure beachheads in Normandy? That was the question, and it was up to Ike’s chief meteorologist, James Martin Stagg, to give him the answer. On the night of June 4, the weather hung on a knife’s edge. The three weather bureaus advising Stagg—the US Army Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the British Met Office—each provided differing forecasts. Worse, leading meteorologists in the USAAF and Met Office argued stormily. Stagg had only one chance to get it right. Were he wrong, thousands of men would perish, secrecy about when and where the Allies would land would be lost, victory in Europe would be delayed for a year, and the Communists might well take control of the continent.
Produktdetails
- Produktdetails
- Verlag: Globe Pequot Publishing Group Inc
- Seitenzahl: 272
- Erscheinungstermin: 6. Mai 2025
- Englisch
- Abmessung: 227mm x 157mm x 17mm
- Gewicht: 440g
- ISBN-13: 9781493090440
- ISBN-10: 1493090445
- Artikelnr.: 70989997
- Herstellerkennzeichnung
- Libri GmbH
- Europaallee 1
- 36244 Bad Hersfeld
- gpsr@libri.de
- Verlag: Globe Pequot Publishing Group Inc
- Seitenzahl: 272
- Erscheinungstermin: 6. Mai 2025
- Englisch
- Abmessung: 227mm x 157mm x 17mm
- Gewicht: 440g
- ISBN-13: 9781493090440
- ISBN-10: 1493090445
- Artikelnr.: 70989997
- Herstellerkennzeichnung
- Libri GmbH
- Europaallee 1
- 36244 Bad Hersfeld
- gpsr@libri.de
Long fascinated by the confluence of natural science and historic events, John E. Ross has authored or co-authored eight books, including North America’s Greatest Fishing Lodges (with Katie Anders); North America's Greatest Big Game Lodges and Outfitters (with Jay Cassell); North America's Greatest Bird Hunting Lodges and Preserves; Great Water, Great Fish: The Worldwide Guide to Fly Fishing; two editions of the TU Guide to America's 100 Best Trout Streams, which won the 1999 National Outdoor Book Award, and Rivers of Restoration, which contains 21 profiles of trout watersheds in recovery. He lives in Abingdon, Virginia.
Table of Contents
Prologue – Whether the Weather: By late May, 1944, plans for Operation
Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwestern France, were complete.
Generals and admirals of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary
Force (SHAEF) had drafted exquisite plans down to which pillbox each
platoon would assault. Shortly after midnight on D-day, airborne regiments
would drop behind the beaches of Normandy. Heavy bombers would pound enemy
emplacements. Landing craft would hover off shore, timed to land soldiers
at low tide just as dawn was breaking. That was the plan, and SHAEF’s
commanders, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, were as confident of its
success as the title of their headquarters suggests. All during May,
southern England had enjoyed balmy weather lulling leaders to believe it
would continue through D-day. Yet in late May 4,000 miles over Manitoba a
dimple formed in the upper atmosphere, the precursor of storms that would
douse a forest fire in Maine and throw the schedule for D-day into a cocked
hat. Commanders worried about the weather. It was the one element of the
invasion they could not control. Since the evolution of meteorology as a
science in the mid-1800s, its reputation among the military had been
besmirched by suicide, scandal, and errant forecasts. So deeply distrustful
of weather predictions were several army and navy commanders, that they
took pride in the ability to “weather the weather” whether they liked it or
not.
Chapter 1 – The Front: On a sheet torn from a note pad soon after deciding
to launch D-day, the greatest invasion the world would ever see, Ike
penciled the words he would read publicly if the landings failed. For two
years, the Allies had been pouring men, equipment, and supplies into the
United Kingdom. All was set to go on the night of June 4. But observers
on weather ships and stations in Greenland and Iceland reported that fair
weather had turned foul, putting the invasion at risk. It fell to Ike’s
weatherman, James Martin Stagg to sort out conflicting forecasts from the
U. S. Air Force, Royal Navy, and the civilian British Meteorological
Office. Stagg was not a meteorologist but a world renowned geophysicist.
His appointment as SHAEF’s chief weatherman was roundly criticized on all
sides. Operating in cramped quarters with his deputy, Stagg had to get the
forecast right. To err would result in the greatest military debacle in
modern history. Had D-day been a failure the fate of the world as we know
it could have been very different. The Russians might well have occupied
all of Germany. French communists would have controlled its National
Assembly. NATO would have been unlikely. Ike would have been cashiered
and never become president opening the door for MacArthur who wanted to use
nuclear weapons against China in the Korean War.
Chapter 2 – Polar Extremes: Stagg’s task was to meld forecasts from the US
Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the British civilian Meteorological Office
up through the ranks of which he had risen over the past 20 years. Each
group of forecasters used different methodology to arrive at their
predictions. Professional jealousies among them were rife, but all were
united on one point: Stagg should never have been made Ike’s weatherman.
The job should have gone to a professional meteorologist, meaning one of
them. As they bickered, storms threatening D-day were sweeping across the
Atlantic. When Stagg refused to accept the American view that the weather
on the night of June 4 would be suitable for the invasion, Col. Irving P.
Krick, its chief advocate who became a meteorologist to make money
preparing forecasts for Hollywood studios, attempted to end-run Stagg
through generals commanding US Air Forces. Had Ike listened to his
generals instead of Stagg, the invasion would have failed.
Chapter 3 – The Maritimes: In the northern hemisphere, weather moves from
west to east. Observations that the three weather offices used to make
their forecasts came from a few stations on the coast of Greenland where
Allied and German weathermen skirmished, on Coast Guard cutters wallowing
in heavy Atlantic swells as they steamed in endless circles, at Allied
airfields in Iceland, and from recordings made by solo weather
reconnaissance flights a thousand miles out to sea. Gathered under the
most difficult conditions and compiled by hand, weather data was always
suspect. In the weather hut at SHAEF’s Advanced Headquarters, as plans for
the invasion hang in the balance, two Royal Navy ratings, Jean Farren and
Harold Checketts, plot the data on charts Stagg used to make his forecast.
To Ike and his senior commanders, Stagg reports deteriorating weather over
the Atlantic. Ike, having taken Stagg’s measure over the past six months,
trusts Stagg and decides to wait to the last possible moment before
deciding whether to go or postpone.
Chapter 4 – Unknown Allies: During the war, important weather data is being
gathered by all sides. After the war begins, Germans continue to use
international protocols for transmitting encoded weather information.
Recognizing the pattern of the data, British code breakers at Bletchley
Hall suspect it is related to the weather, which is confirmed when the
Royal Navy captured its first Enigma machine from a German weather ship
thus breaking the much vaunted code. US Air Force Col. Donald Yates,
Stagg’s deputy, establishes weather stations in Russia. Though officially
neutral, Ireland signs a secret treaty with England to provide weather
data. Two postal clerks - Ted Sweeny and Maureen Flavin record weather
observations critical for D-day decisions on Blacksod Point on the far west
coast of County Mayo, a remote but critical outpost, where they fall in
love.
Chapter 5 – High Pressure: To ease the strain when off watch, Royal Navy
ratings Farren and Checketts read Chinese poetry to each other. They too
fall in love. Stagg is plagued by anxiety as well and takes lonely walks
around Southwick estate debating pros and cons of styles of US Air Force,
Royal Navy, and Met Office forecasting centers. Americans are sanguine
that, based on their belief in the predictive power of 50 years of daily
weather maps, a ridge of high pressure will protect Normandy from the
rapidly advancing storm fronts. The Royal Navy and Met Office adamantly
disagree and the weather conference call at 0300 on 4 June is extremely
rancorous, with much argument and some personal invective. Stagg has one
hour to forge consensus among them on the forecast to present to Ike and
his commanders.
Chapter 6 – Postpone: At 0415 on 4 June, Stagg and Yates present a dreary
forecast of wind, cloud, and seas well above the limits set for invasion.
Ike queries his commanders: Montgomery, in charge of all ground forces is
ready to go regardless of the weather. Adm. Ramsay, naval supreme
commander, believes he can put men ashore. Air forces commander
Leigh-Mallory opposes the launch because cloud and wind could make air
operations – where Allies reigned supreme – all but impossible. But the
ultimate fate of the invasion rests with one man: Ike decides to
tentatively postpone for 24 hours. Invasion fleet is halted but battered
by rough seas. Germans, seeing the approach of the same cold front, let
down their guard. Rommel returns to Germany for wife’s birthday and a
meeting w/Hitler to plead for permission to deploy Panzers in the event of
an Allied landing. Most German commanders opt to attend war games, one
steals away to Paris for a weekend tryst with his paramour. Stagg and
Yates return to their tent as dawn, lovely and serene, is breaking.
Chapter 7 – Glimmer in the West: The two weathermen awake to a beautiful
dawn on the morning of June 4 and feel nauseated that their forecast was
wrong. But by breakfast time, clouds begin to fill the sky and thicken
during the day. Jousting for which weather central deserves credit for the
postponement all but derails the early afternoon weather conference call.
Three hours later, when the conference call reconvenes, observations from
Blacksod Point and other weather stations in Ireland convey that a strong
front is passing and that the weather will improve the next day. At 9:30
p.m., Ike holds firm to his decision to postpone until the next commanders
meeting at 4:15 a.m. on June 5. Stagg leaves the commanders with the
feeling that the forecast will be better tomorrow morning. All commanders
eagerly hope so. If not, troop transports that left their harbors when the
invasion was scheduled for the night of 4 June, will run out of oil and
have to return to port with the fleet snarled in unimaginable confusion.
The next time tide conditions allow for a launch is in mid-June. But, but
a two-week delay ups the odds that the Germans will discover that Normandy
is the Allies’ target.
Chapter 8 – Go!: At 4:15 a.m. on 5 June, high winds and heavy rain
pummels Southwick House, yet Stagg’s briefing to the supreme commanders
confirms a 36-hour window of milder weather, still not ideal, for night of
5/6 June. Ike says go. Though German meteorologists too see the break in
weather, but the German commanders’ preconceived idea that the invasion
could only come at high tide lulls them into false security. Surprise is
complete, though weather hinders the invasion to be sure. Soldiers reeling
from seasickness and reeking of vomit prefer landing in the teeth of enemy
fire to one more moment on their landing craft. Bombers miss their
targets. Wind scatters the airborne assault. Waves sink amphibious
tanks. Still D-day succeeds.
Chapter 9 – Gale of the Century: The fallback dates for D-day were 17 – 19
June. Though the Allies could have landed forces on the 17th and 18th, a
ferocious gale blew across the Bay of the Seine and onto Normandy on 19 and
20 June. Had Ike decided not to invade on 5/6 June and delayed for two
weeks, the critical post-landing buildup of men, heavy weapons, and
supplies to secure the beachhead would have been totally disrupted with the
prospect that Rommel would drive the invaders back into the sea.
Epilogue – The Hero and the Goat: After the war, Stagg becomes Principal
Deputy Director of the Met Office and, later, president of the Royal
Meteorological Society. Stagg is named a Companion in the Most Honourable
Order of the Bath. He wins international renown for his work in
geophysics. Krick returns to chair the meteorology department at CalTech,
which fires him for misuse of university property to further his private
business interests. He founds a private weather forecasting firm, which is
sued when contracts it has secured to make rain over desert communities
fail. For unprofessional practices, he is expelled from the American
Meteorological Society.
Prologue – Whether the Weather: By late May, 1944, plans for Operation
Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwestern France, were complete.
Generals and admirals of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary
Force (SHAEF) had drafted exquisite plans down to which pillbox each
platoon would assault. Shortly after midnight on D-day, airborne regiments
would drop behind the beaches of Normandy. Heavy bombers would pound enemy
emplacements. Landing craft would hover off shore, timed to land soldiers
at low tide just as dawn was breaking. That was the plan, and SHAEF’s
commanders, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, were as confident of its
success as the title of their headquarters suggests. All during May,
southern England had enjoyed balmy weather lulling leaders to believe it
would continue through D-day. Yet in late May 4,000 miles over Manitoba a
dimple formed in the upper atmosphere, the precursor of storms that would
douse a forest fire in Maine and throw the schedule for D-day into a cocked
hat. Commanders worried about the weather. It was the one element of the
invasion they could not control. Since the evolution of meteorology as a
science in the mid-1800s, its reputation among the military had been
besmirched by suicide, scandal, and errant forecasts. So deeply distrustful
of weather predictions were several army and navy commanders, that they
took pride in the ability to “weather the weather” whether they liked it or
not.
Chapter 1 – The Front: On a sheet torn from a note pad soon after deciding
to launch D-day, the greatest invasion the world would ever see, Ike
penciled the words he would read publicly if the landings failed. For two
years, the Allies had been pouring men, equipment, and supplies into the
United Kingdom. All was set to go on the night of June 4. But observers
on weather ships and stations in Greenland and Iceland reported that fair
weather had turned foul, putting the invasion at risk. It fell to Ike’s
weatherman, James Martin Stagg to sort out conflicting forecasts from the
U. S. Air Force, Royal Navy, and the civilian British Meteorological
Office. Stagg was not a meteorologist but a world renowned geophysicist.
His appointment as SHAEF’s chief weatherman was roundly criticized on all
sides. Operating in cramped quarters with his deputy, Stagg had to get the
forecast right. To err would result in the greatest military debacle in
modern history. Had D-day been a failure the fate of the world as we know
it could have been very different. The Russians might well have occupied
all of Germany. French communists would have controlled its National
Assembly. NATO would have been unlikely. Ike would have been cashiered
and never become president opening the door for MacArthur who wanted to use
nuclear weapons against China in the Korean War.
Chapter 2 – Polar Extremes: Stagg’s task was to meld forecasts from the US
Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the British civilian Meteorological Office
up through the ranks of which he had risen over the past 20 years. Each
group of forecasters used different methodology to arrive at their
predictions. Professional jealousies among them were rife, but all were
united on one point: Stagg should never have been made Ike’s weatherman.
The job should have gone to a professional meteorologist, meaning one of
them. As they bickered, storms threatening D-day were sweeping across the
Atlantic. When Stagg refused to accept the American view that the weather
on the night of June 4 would be suitable for the invasion, Col. Irving P.
Krick, its chief advocate who became a meteorologist to make money
preparing forecasts for Hollywood studios, attempted to end-run Stagg
through generals commanding US Air Forces. Had Ike listened to his
generals instead of Stagg, the invasion would have failed.
Chapter 3 – The Maritimes: In the northern hemisphere, weather moves from
west to east. Observations that the three weather offices used to make
their forecasts came from a few stations on the coast of Greenland where
Allied and German weathermen skirmished, on Coast Guard cutters wallowing
in heavy Atlantic swells as they steamed in endless circles, at Allied
airfields in Iceland, and from recordings made by solo weather
reconnaissance flights a thousand miles out to sea. Gathered under the
most difficult conditions and compiled by hand, weather data was always
suspect. In the weather hut at SHAEF’s Advanced Headquarters, as plans for
the invasion hang in the balance, two Royal Navy ratings, Jean Farren and
Harold Checketts, plot the data on charts Stagg used to make his forecast.
To Ike and his senior commanders, Stagg reports deteriorating weather over
the Atlantic. Ike, having taken Stagg’s measure over the past six months,
trusts Stagg and decides to wait to the last possible moment before
deciding whether to go or postpone.
Chapter 4 – Unknown Allies: During the war, important weather data is being
gathered by all sides. After the war begins, Germans continue to use
international protocols for transmitting encoded weather information.
Recognizing the pattern of the data, British code breakers at Bletchley
Hall suspect it is related to the weather, which is confirmed when the
Royal Navy captured its first Enigma machine from a German weather ship
thus breaking the much vaunted code. US Air Force Col. Donald Yates,
Stagg’s deputy, establishes weather stations in Russia. Though officially
neutral, Ireland signs a secret treaty with England to provide weather
data. Two postal clerks - Ted Sweeny and Maureen Flavin record weather
observations critical for D-day decisions on Blacksod Point on the far west
coast of County Mayo, a remote but critical outpost, where they fall in
love.
Chapter 5 – High Pressure: To ease the strain when off watch, Royal Navy
ratings Farren and Checketts read Chinese poetry to each other. They too
fall in love. Stagg is plagued by anxiety as well and takes lonely walks
around Southwick estate debating pros and cons of styles of US Air Force,
Royal Navy, and Met Office forecasting centers. Americans are sanguine
that, based on their belief in the predictive power of 50 years of daily
weather maps, a ridge of high pressure will protect Normandy from the
rapidly advancing storm fronts. The Royal Navy and Met Office adamantly
disagree and the weather conference call at 0300 on 4 June is extremely
rancorous, with much argument and some personal invective. Stagg has one
hour to forge consensus among them on the forecast to present to Ike and
his commanders.
Chapter 6 – Postpone: At 0415 on 4 June, Stagg and Yates present a dreary
forecast of wind, cloud, and seas well above the limits set for invasion.
Ike queries his commanders: Montgomery, in charge of all ground forces is
ready to go regardless of the weather. Adm. Ramsay, naval supreme
commander, believes he can put men ashore. Air forces commander
Leigh-Mallory opposes the launch because cloud and wind could make air
operations – where Allies reigned supreme – all but impossible. But the
ultimate fate of the invasion rests with one man: Ike decides to
tentatively postpone for 24 hours. Invasion fleet is halted but battered
by rough seas. Germans, seeing the approach of the same cold front, let
down their guard. Rommel returns to Germany for wife’s birthday and a
meeting w/Hitler to plead for permission to deploy Panzers in the event of
an Allied landing. Most German commanders opt to attend war games, one
steals away to Paris for a weekend tryst with his paramour. Stagg and
Yates return to their tent as dawn, lovely and serene, is breaking.
Chapter 7 – Glimmer in the West: The two weathermen awake to a beautiful
dawn on the morning of June 4 and feel nauseated that their forecast was
wrong. But by breakfast time, clouds begin to fill the sky and thicken
during the day. Jousting for which weather central deserves credit for the
postponement all but derails the early afternoon weather conference call.
Three hours later, when the conference call reconvenes, observations from
Blacksod Point and other weather stations in Ireland convey that a strong
front is passing and that the weather will improve the next day. At 9:30
p.m., Ike holds firm to his decision to postpone until the next commanders
meeting at 4:15 a.m. on June 5. Stagg leaves the commanders with the
feeling that the forecast will be better tomorrow morning. All commanders
eagerly hope so. If not, troop transports that left their harbors when the
invasion was scheduled for the night of 4 June, will run out of oil and
have to return to port with the fleet snarled in unimaginable confusion.
The next time tide conditions allow for a launch is in mid-June. But, but
a two-week delay ups the odds that the Germans will discover that Normandy
is the Allies’ target.
Chapter 8 – Go!: At 4:15 a.m. on 5 June, high winds and heavy rain
pummels Southwick House, yet Stagg’s briefing to the supreme commanders
confirms a 36-hour window of milder weather, still not ideal, for night of
5/6 June. Ike says go. Though German meteorologists too see the break in
weather, but the German commanders’ preconceived idea that the invasion
could only come at high tide lulls them into false security. Surprise is
complete, though weather hinders the invasion to be sure. Soldiers reeling
from seasickness and reeking of vomit prefer landing in the teeth of enemy
fire to one more moment on their landing craft. Bombers miss their
targets. Wind scatters the airborne assault. Waves sink amphibious
tanks. Still D-day succeeds.
Chapter 9 – Gale of the Century: The fallback dates for D-day were 17 – 19
June. Though the Allies could have landed forces on the 17th and 18th, a
ferocious gale blew across the Bay of the Seine and onto Normandy on 19 and
20 June. Had Ike decided not to invade on 5/6 June and delayed for two
weeks, the critical post-landing buildup of men, heavy weapons, and
supplies to secure the beachhead would have been totally disrupted with the
prospect that Rommel would drive the invaders back into the sea.
Epilogue – The Hero and the Goat: After the war, Stagg becomes Principal
Deputy Director of the Met Office and, later, president of the Royal
Meteorological Society. Stagg is named a Companion in the Most Honourable
Order of the Bath. He wins international renown for his work in
geophysics. Krick returns to chair the meteorology department at CalTech,
which fires him for misuse of university property to further his private
business interests. He founds a private weather forecasting firm, which is
sued when contracts it has secured to make rain over desert communities
fail. For unprofessional practices, he is expelled from the American
Meteorological Society.
Table of Contents
Prologue – Whether the Weather: By late May, 1944, plans for Operation
Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwestern France, were complete.
Generals and admirals of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary
Force (SHAEF) had drafted exquisite plans down to which pillbox each
platoon would assault. Shortly after midnight on D-day, airborne regiments
would drop behind the beaches of Normandy. Heavy bombers would pound enemy
emplacements. Landing craft would hover off shore, timed to land soldiers
at low tide just as dawn was breaking. That was the plan, and SHAEF’s
commanders, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, were as confident of its
success as the title of their headquarters suggests. All during May,
southern England had enjoyed balmy weather lulling leaders to believe it
would continue through D-day. Yet in late May 4,000 miles over Manitoba a
dimple formed in the upper atmosphere, the precursor of storms that would
douse a forest fire in Maine and throw the schedule for D-day into a cocked
hat. Commanders worried about the weather. It was the one element of the
invasion they could not control. Since the evolution of meteorology as a
science in the mid-1800s, its reputation among the military had been
besmirched by suicide, scandal, and errant forecasts. So deeply distrustful
of weather predictions were several army and navy commanders, that they
took pride in the ability to “weather the weather” whether they liked it or
not.
Chapter 1 – The Front: On a sheet torn from a note pad soon after deciding
to launch D-day, the greatest invasion the world would ever see, Ike
penciled the words he would read publicly if the landings failed. For two
years, the Allies had been pouring men, equipment, and supplies into the
United Kingdom. All was set to go on the night of June 4. But observers
on weather ships and stations in Greenland and Iceland reported that fair
weather had turned foul, putting the invasion at risk. It fell to Ike’s
weatherman, James Martin Stagg to sort out conflicting forecasts from the
U. S. Air Force, Royal Navy, and the civilian British Meteorological
Office. Stagg was not a meteorologist but a world renowned geophysicist.
His appointment as SHAEF’s chief weatherman was roundly criticized on all
sides. Operating in cramped quarters with his deputy, Stagg had to get the
forecast right. To err would result in the greatest military debacle in
modern history. Had D-day been a failure the fate of the world as we know
it could have been very different. The Russians might well have occupied
all of Germany. French communists would have controlled its National
Assembly. NATO would have been unlikely. Ike would have been cashiered
and never become president opening the door for MacArthur who wanted to use
nuclear weapons against China in the Korean War.
Chapter 2 – Polar Extremes: Stagg’s task was to meld forecasts from the US
Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the British civilian Meteorological Office
up through the ranks of which he had risen over the past 20 years. Each
group of forecasters used different methodology to arrive at their
predictions. Professional jealousies among them were rife, but all were
united on one point: Stagg should never have been made Ike’s weatherman.
The job should have gone to a professional meteorologist, meaning one of
them. As they bickered, storms threatening D-day were sweeping across the
Atlantic. When Stagg refused to accept the American view that the weather
on the night of June 4 would be suitable for the invasion, Col. Irving P.
Krick, its chief advocate who became a meteorologist to make money
preparing forecasts for Hollywood studios, attempted to end-run Stagg
through generals commanding US Air Forces. Had Ike listened to his
generals instead of Stagg, the invasion would have failed.
Chapter 3 – The Maritimes: In the northern hemisphere, weather moves from
west to east. Observations that the three weather offices used to make
their forecasts came from a few stations on the coast of Greenland where
Allied and German weathermen skirmished, on Coast Guard cutters wallowing
in heavy Atlantic swells as they steamed in endless circles, at Allied
airfields in Iceland, and from recordings made by solo weather
reconnaissance flights a thousand miles out to sea. Gathered under the
most difficult conditions and compiled by hand, weather data was always
suspect. In the weather hut at SHAEF’s Advanced Headquarters, as plans for
the invasion hang in the balance, two Royal Navy ratings, Jean Farren and
Harold Checketts, plot the data on charts Stagg used to make his forecast.
To Ike and his senior commanders, Stagg reports deteriorating weather over
the Atlantic. Ike, having taken Stagg’s measure over the past six months,
trusts Stagg and decides to wait to the last possible moment before
deciding whether to go or postpone.
Chapter 4 – Unknown Allies: During the war, important weather data is being
gathered by all sides. After the war begins, Germans continue to use
international protocols for transmitting encoded weather information.
Recognizing the pattern of the data, British code breakers at Bletchley
Hall suspect it is related to the weather, which is confirmed when the
Royal Navy captured its first Enigma machine from a German weather ship
thus breaking the much vaunted code. US Air Force Col. Donald Yates,
Stagg’s deputy, establishes weather stations in Russia. Though officially
neutral, Ireland signs a secret treaty with England to provide weather
data. Two postal clerks - Ted Sweeny and Maureen Flavin record weather
observations critical for D-day decisions on Blacksod Point on the far west
coast of County Mayo, a remote but critical outpost, where they fall in
love.
Chapter 5 – High Pressure: To ease the strain when off watch, Royal Navy
ratings Farren and Checketts read Chinese poetry to each other. They too
fall in love. Stagg is plagued by anxiety as well and takes lonely walks
around Southwick estate debating pros and cons of styles of US Air Force,
Royal Navy, and Met Office forecasting centers. Americans are sanguine
that, based on their belief in the predictive power of 50 years of daily
weather maps, a ridge of high pressure will protect Normandy from the
rapidly advancing storm fronts. The Royal Navy and Met Office adamantly
disagree and the weather conference call at 0300 on 4 June is extremely
rancorous, with much argument and some personal invective. Stagg has one
hour to forge consensus among them on the forecast to present to Ike and
his commanders.
Chapter 6 – Postpone: At 0415 on 4 June, Stagg and Yates present a dreary
forecast of wind, cloud, and seas well above the limits set for invasion.
Ike queries his commanders: Montgomery, in charge of all ground forces is
ready to go regardless of the weather. Adm. Ramsay, naval supreme
commander, believes he can put men ashore. Air forces commander
Leigh-Mallory opposes the launch because cloud and wind could make air
operations – where Allies reigned supreme – all but impossible. But the
ultimate fate of the invasion rests with one man: Ike decides to
tentatively postpone for 24 hours. Invasion fleet is halted but battered
by rough seas. Germans, seeing the approach of the same cold front, let
down their guard. Rommel returns to Germany for wife’s birthday and a
meeting w/Hitler to plead for permission to deploy Panzers in the event of
an Allied landing. Most German commanders opt to attend war games, one
steals away to Paris for a weekend tryst with his paramour. Stagg and
Yates return to their tent as dawn, lovely and serene, is breaking.
Chapter 7 – Glimmer in the West: The two weathermen awake to a beautiful
dawn on the morning of June 4 and feel nauseated that their forecast was
wrong. But by breakfast time, clouds begin to fill the sky and thicken
during the day. Jousting for which weather central deserves credit for the
postponement all but derails the early afternoon weather conference call.
Three hours later, when the conference call reconvenes, observations from
Blacksod Point and other weather stations in Ireland convey that a strong
front is passing and that the weather will improve the next day. At 9:30
p.m., Ike holds firm to his decision to postpone until the next commanders
meeting at 4:15 a.m. on June 5. Stagg leaves the commanders with the
feeling that the forecast will be better tomorrow morning. All commanders
eagerly hope so. If not, troop transports that left their harbors when the
invasion was scheduled for the night of 4 June, will run out of oil and
have to return to port with the fleet snarled in unimaginable confusion.
The next time tide conditions allow for a launch is in mid-June. But, but
a two-week delay ups the odds that the Germans will discover that Normandy
is the Allies’ target.
Chapter 8 – Go!: At 4:15 a.m. on 5 June, high winds and heavy rain
pummels Southwick House, yet Stagg’s briefing to the supreme commanders
confirms a 36-hour window of milder weather, still not ideal, for night of
5/6 June. Ike says go. Though German meteorologists too see the break in
weather, but the German commanders’ preconceived idea that the invasion
could only come at high tide lulls them into false security. Surprise is
complete, though weather hinders the invasion to be sure. Soldiers reeling
from seasickness and reeking of vomit prefer landing in the teeth of enemy
fire to one more moment on their landing craft. Bombers miss their
targets. Wind scatters the airborne assault. Waves sink amphibious
tanks. Still D-day succeeds.
Chapter 9 – Gale of the Century: The fallback dates for D-day were 17 – 19
June. Though the Allies could have landed forces on the 17th and 18th, a
ferocious gale blew across the Bay of the Seine and onto Normandy on 19 and
20 June. Had Ike decided not to invade on 5/6 June and delayed for two
weeks, the critical post-landing buildup of men, heavy weapons, and
supplies to secure the beachhead would have been totally disrupted with the
prospect that Rommel would drive the invaders back into the sea.
Epilogue – The Hero and the Goat: After the war, Stagg becomes Principal
Deputy Director of the Met Office and, later, president of the Royal
Meteorological Society. Stagg is named a Companion in the Most Honourable
Order of the Bath. He wins international renown for his work in
geophysics. Krick returns to chair the meteorology department at CalTech,
which fires him for misuse of university property to further his private
business interests. He founds a private weather forecasting firm, which is
sued when contracts it has secured to make rain over desert communities
fail. For unprofessional practices, he is expelled from the American
Meteorological Society.
Prologue – Whether the Weather: By late May, 1944, plans for Operation
Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwestern France, were complete.
Generals and admirals of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary
Force (SHAEF) had drafted exquisite plans down to which pillbox each
platoon would assault. Shortly after midnight on D-day, airborne regiments
would drop behind the beaches of Normandy. Heavy bombers would pound enemy
emplacements. Landing craft would hover off shore, timed to land soldiers
at low tide just as dawn was breaking. That was the plan, and SHAEF’s
commanders, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, were as confident of its
success as the title of their headquarters suggests. All during May,
southern England had enjoyed balmy weather lulling leaders to believe it
would continue through D-day. Yet in late May 4,000 miles over Manitoba a
dimple formed in the upper atmosphere, the precursor of storms that would
douse a forest fire in Maine and throw the schedule for D-day into a cocked
hat. Commanders worried about the weather. It was the one element of the
invasion they could not control. Since the evolution of meteorology as a
science in the mid-1800s, its reputation among the military had been
besmirched by suicide, scandal, and errant forecasts. So deeply distrustful
of weather predictions were several army and navy commanders, that they
took pride in the ability to “weather the weather” whether they liked it or
not.
Chapter 1 – The Front: On a sheet torn from a note pad soon after deciding
to launch D-day, the greatest invasion the world would ever see, Ike
penciled the words he would read publicly if the landings failed. For two
years, the Allies had been pouring men, equipment, and supplies into the
United Kingdom. All was set to go on the night of June 4. But observers
on weather ships and stations in Greenland and Iceland reported that fair
weather had turned foul, putting the invasion at risk. It fell to Ike’s
weatherman, James Martin Stagg to sort out conflicting forecasts from the
U. S. Air Force, Royal Navy, and the civilian British Meteorological
Office. Stagg was not a meteorologist but a world renowned geophysicist.
His appointment as SHAEF’s chief weatherman was roundly criticized on all
sides. Operating in cramped quarters with his deputy, Stagg had to get the
forecast right. To err would result in the greatest military debacle in
modern history. Had D-day been a failure the fate of the world as we know
it could have been very different. The Russians might well have occupied
all of Germany. French communists would have controlled its National
Assembly. NATO would have been unlikely. Ike would have been cashiered
and never become president opening the door for MacArthur who wanted to use
nuclear weapons against China in the Korean War.
Chapter 2 – Polar Extremes: Stagg’s task was to meld forecasts from the US
Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the British civilian Meteorological Office
up through the ranks of which he had risen over the past 20 years. Each
group of forecasters used different methodology to arrive at their
predictions. Professional jealousies among them were rife, but all were
united on one point: Stagg should never have been made Ike’s weatherman.
The job should have gone to a professional meteorologist, meaning one of
them. As they bickered, storms threatening D-day were sweeping across the
Atlantic. When Stagg refused to accept the American view that the weather
on the night of June 4 would be suitable for the invasion, Col. Irving P.
Krick, its chief advocate who became a meteorologist to make money
preparing forecasts for Hollywood studios, attempted to end-run Stagg
through generals commanding US Air Forces. Had Ike listened to his
generals instead of Stagg, the invasion would have failed.
Chapter 3 – The Maritimes: In the northern hemisphere, weather moves from
west to east. Observations that the three weather offices used to make
their forecasts came from a few stations on the coast of Greenland where
Allied and German weathermen skirmished, on Coast Guard cutters wallowing
in heavy Atlantic swells as they steamed in endless circles, at Allied
airfields in Iceland, and from recordings made by solo weather
reconnaissance flights a thousand miles out to sea. Gathered under the
most difficult conditions and compiled by hand, weather data was always
suspect. In the weather hut at SHAEF’s Advanced Headquarters, as plans for
the invasion hang in the balance, two Royal Navy ratings, Jean Farren and
Harold Checketts, plot the data on charts Stagg used to make his forecast.
To Ike and his senior commanders, Stagg reports deteriorating weather over
the Atlantic. Ike, having taken Stagg’s measure over the past six months,
trusts Stagg and decides to wait to the last possible moment before
deciding whether to go or postpone.
Chapter 4 – Unknown Allies: During the war, important weather data is being
gathered by all sides. After the war begins, Germans continue to use
international protocols for transmitting encoded weather information.
Recognizing the pattern of the data, British code breakers at Bletchley
Hall suspect it is related to the weather, which is confirmed when the
Royal Navy captured its first Enigma machine from a German weather ship
thus breaking the much vaunted code. US Air Force Col. Donald Yates,
Stagg’s deputy, establishes weather stations in Russia. Though officially
neutral, Ireland signs a secret treaty with England to provide weather
data. Two postal clerks - Ted Sweeny and Maureen Flavin record weather
observations critical for D-day decisions on Blacksod Point on the far west
coast of County Mayo, a remote but critical outpost, where they fall in
love.
Chapter 5 – High Pressure: To ease the strain when off watch, Royal Navy
ratings Farren and Checketts read Chinese poetry to each other. They too
fall in love. Stagg is plagued by anxiety as well and takes lonely walks
around Southwick estate debating pros and cons of styles of US Air Force,
Royal Navy, and Met Office forecasting centers. Americans are sanguine
that, based on their belief in the predictive power of 50 years of daily
weather maps, a ridge of high pressure will protect Normandy from the
rapidly advancing storm fronts. The Royal Navy and Met Office adamantly
disagree and the weather conference call at 0300 on 4 June is extremely
rancorous, with much argument and some personal invective. Stagg has one
hour to forge consensus among them on the forecast to present to Ike and
his commanders.
Chapter 6 – Postpone: At 0415 on 4 June, Stagg and Yates present a dreary
forecast of wind, cloud, and seas well above the limits set for invasion.
Ike queries his commanders: Montgomery, in charge of all ground forces is
ready to go regardless of the weather. Adm. Ramsay, naval supreme
commander, believes he can put men ashore. Air forces commander
Leigh-Mallory opposes the launch because cloud and wind could make air
operations – where Allies reigned supreme – all but impossible. But the
ultimate fate of the invasion rests with one man: Ike decides to
tentatively postpone for 24 hours. Invasion fleet is halted but battered
by rough seas. Germans, seeing the approach of the same cold front, let
down their guard. Rommel returns to Germany for wife’s birthday and a
meeting w/Hitler to plead for permission to deploy Panzers in the event of
an Allied landing. Most German commanders opt to attend war games, one
steals away to Paris for a weekend tryst with his paramour. Stagg and
Yates return to their tent as dawn, lovely and serene, is breaking.
Chapter 7 – Glimmer in the West: The two weathermen awake to a beautiful
dawn on the morning of June 4 and feel nauseated that their forecast was
wrong. But by breakfast time, clouds begin to fill the sky and thicken
during the day. Jousting for which weather central deserves credit for the
postponement all but derails the early afternoon weather conference call.
Three hours later, when the conference call reconvenes, observations from
Blacksod Point and other weather stations in Ireland convey that a strong
front is passing and that the weather will improve the next day. At 9:30
p.m., Ike holds firm to his decision to postpone until the next commanders
meeting at 4:15 a.m. on June 5. Stagg leaves the commanders with the
feeling that the forecast will be better tomorrow morning. All commanders
eagerly hope so. If not, troop transports that left their harbors when the
invasion was scheduled for the night of 4 June, will run out of oil and
have to return to port with the fleet snarled in unimaginable confusion.
The next time tide conditions allow for a launch is in mid-June. But, but
a two-week delay ups the odds that the Germans will discover that Normandy
is the Allies’ target.
Chapter 8 – Go!: At 4:15 a.m. on 5 June, high winds and heavy rain
pummels Southwick House, yet Stagg’s briefing to the supreme commanders
confirms a 36-hour window of milder weather, still not ideal, for night of
5/6 June. Ike says go. Though German meteorologists too see the break in
weather, but the German commanders’ preconceived idea that the invasion
could only come at high tide lulls them into false security. Surprise is
complete, though weather hinders the invasion to be sure. Soldiers reeling
from seasickness and reeking of vomit prefer landing in the teeth of enemy
fire to one more moment on their landing craft. Bombers miss their
targets. Wind scatters the airborne assault. Waves sink amphibious
tanks. Still D-day succeeds.
Chapter 9 – Gale of the Century: The fallback dates for D-day were 17 – 19
June. Though the Allies could have landed forces on the 17th and 18th, a
ferocious gale blew across the Bay of the Seine and onto Normandy on 19 and
20 June. Had Ike decided not to invade on 5/6 June and delayed for two
weeks, the critical post-landing buildup of men, heavy weapons, and
supplies to secure the beachhead would have been totally disrupted with the
prospect that Rommel would drive the invaders back into the sea.
Epilogue – The Hero and the Goat: After the war, Stagg becomes Principal
Deputy Director of the Met Office and, later, president of the Royal
Meteorological Society. Stagg is named a Companion in the Most Honourable
Order of the Bath. He wins international renown for his work in
geophysics. Krick returns to chair the meteorology department at CalTech,
which fires him for misuse of university property to further his private
business interests. He founds a private weather forecasting firm, which is
sued when contracts it has secured to make rain over desert communities
fail. For unprofessional practices, he is expelled from the American
Meteorological Society.