The Forecast for D-Day: And the Weatherman behind Ike's Greatest Gamble [Paperback]

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.Long fascinated by the confluence of natural science and historic events, John E. Rosshas authored or co-authored eight books, includingNorth 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 theTU Guide to America's 100 Best Trout Streams, which won the 1999 National Outdoor Book Award, andRivers 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 whiló&