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.