[Downunderjock]

Originally Posted by Aktungbby

BE HAPPY! James Martin Stagg, an Edinborough educated dour Scotsman, 'called the ball' as the head of a contentious meteorology team for June 6th using German deciphered weather reports to make a final determination after the cancellation of June 5th!
Some required background: https://medium.com/history-and-politics/the-weather-on-d-day-85ea0491a14f Essentilly there was no mystery for the Germans that June 5,6,and 7th were ideal tide and moon conditions. They had planned their own invasion Operation Sealion. "The Germans believed that the weather was too bad for the Allies to invade. This was not the fault of poor forecasting. Group Captain Heinz Lettau—later a revered professor of meteorology at the University of Wisconsin—saw the same succession of fronts as did the Allied forecasters. He may or may not have noted the marginal improvement of the weather on the 6th. Even had he seen this, however, his orders were clear. The High Command had decided that an invasion was not possible if there was a risk of the winds reaching force 4 or higher. (The Germans had put off their own planned invasion of Britain, Operation Sea Lion, in 1940, in part because they could never get what they felt was a calm-enough sea for the troops to cross.) Lettau was confident—and right—that there would be a force 4 wind on June 5, 6, and 7. Ergo, there could be no invasion. What the Germans failed to find out was that the Allies thought force 4 was just fine." Essentially, a difference in pain threshold weatherwise made the difference. Or to quote Hitler directly: "On land I am a hero; At sea, I am a Coward" sort of worked its way down the ladder of command...

Thank you, for correcting me on that.