All history enthusiasts—or at least those particularly interested in military history—remember a date that marked a before and after in World War II: June 6, 1944. That day is usually referred to by its code name, D-Day, the day when Operation Overlord began; in other words, the Allied forces’ continental invasion. However, the landings on the beaches of Normandy could have taken place twenty-four hours earlier had it not been for one man who convinced Eisenhower to delay them, predicting that the weather would improve and facilitate the maneuvers. His name was James Stagg.

Of course, this was not a matter of intuition or chance. Stagg was in charge of the Met Office, the United Kingdom’s national meteorological service, established in 1854 by Vice Admiral Robert FitzRoy (whose name might sound familiar as the captain of the HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin’s voyage). However, it was later reinforced with about fifteen coastal stations after the tragic shipwreck of the Royal Charter off the coast of Anglesey, which resulted in the deaths of 459 passengers.

Later, after World War I, a section of the Met Office was assigned to the Air Ministry, with which it shared headquarters (Adastral House), as the increasingly important aviation sector also required weather forecasts. Therefore, when World War II broke out, the Met Office was divided between the Royal Navy and the RAF (Royal Air Force).

James Stagg Weather Operation Overlord
Current appearance of the Adastral House. Credit: Stephen Richards / Wikimedia Commons

James Stagg was assigned to the latter. He was a Scotsman from Dalkeith in the Lowlands, born in 1900, the son of a plumber and a seamstress. Educated at Broughton High School in Edinburgh, he briefly served in the Royal Flying Corps (Britain’s air force during World War I) and, in 1921, enrolled at university to study mathematics and philosophy.

After graduating, he began working as a science teacher at George Heriot’s School, an institution founded in the 17th century for underprivileged children. In 1931, he was put in charge of an Arctic expedition to study terrestrial magnetism and climatic issues, gaining meteorological experience that compensated for his lack of formal training (something that, as we will see, would later be held against him).

Three years later, now holding a doctorate, he joined the Met Office, and in 1939, he was appointed director of the Kew Observatory, which had been specifically built in 1769 by order of King George III (hence also called the King’s Observatory) to observe the transit of Venus. When hostilities broke out between the Axis powers and the Allies, Stagg was named a captain in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, a volunteer corps established in 1936 to provide auxiliary personnel to the air force, and which, at the outbreak of the conflict, supplied crew members for aircraft.

Once Germany began to lose ground, and especially after the Allies managed to land in Italy, it was only a matter of time before they launched an offensive in the western part of the continent. This had been agreed upon at the Trident Conference, held in Washington in May 1943, where U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), assisted by British General Bernard Montgomery as commander of the 21st Army Group.

Planning then began for the aforementioned Operation Overlord, an amphibious landing on the northern coast of France, departing from England, to be complemented by airborne troops being dropped behind enemy lines.

James Stagg Weather Operation Overlord
General Eisenhower speaking to soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division on D-Day. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Clearly, carrying out an operation of such magnitude, involving more than a million and a half soldiers in successive waves, required choosing a time with favorable weather conditions. First, the night before needed to have a full moon, not only to aid aircraft in dropping paratroopers but also to help landing craft reach the beaches during the rising tide, allowing them to spot the obstacles planted by the Germans and calculate the right moment to lower their ramps so soldiers could disembark without being overly exposed to enemy machine guns. Additionally, cloud cover needed to be minimal to avoid interfering with aerial bombings, and strong winds and rain had to be avoided, as they could create problems for both the vessels and the troops.

Considering these and other factors—which meant that only a few days in the year were viable—Eisenhower initially chose June 5. However, he was met with objections from an officer with a reserved demeanor, a lean build, and towering height (nearly six foot three). “Here comes six feet two inches of Stagg and six feet one inch of gloom,” was the famous remark by Admiral Sir George Creasy, referring to Stagg’s pessimism about the weather.

Stagg had been put in charge of the meteorology for the operation, and he was responsible for coordinating the information provided by the three teams of two meteorologists each who were working on it: the Royal Navy, the RAF, and the United States Air Force, called Admiralty, Dunstable, and Widewing, respectively. Each had its own working system and, inevitably, they competed with one another to appear more reliable than the others. Stagg tried to harmonize them, but he only succeeded in earning their disdain due to his lack of specialized academic training.

Tensions erupted on June 3, when the American team predicted good weather for the 5th, while the others denied it, asserting that there would be a storm. Since satellites did not yet exist, results could vary significantly, and forecasts were rarely accurate beyond a couple of days. Widewing refused to back down, so the final decision on what information would be presented to the military rested with Stagg. On the night of June 4, he met with the commanders at the Southwick House headquarters. They were somewhat discouraged because, as it turned out, conditions were indeed adverse despite summer being just around the corner: strong winds, low clouds, and rough seas. Stagg had the final say and gave them good news.

According to the data available to him, the invasion only needed to be delayed by one day, as the weather would improve just enough to attempt the attack on June 6. It was an eight-hour window that had to be seized, because otherwise, they would have to wait a couple of weeks, from June 18 to 20—though by then, there would be no full moon.

Since that option would jeopardize Operation Overlord, both due to the logistical challenges of returning the troops to their camps and the risk that spies might alert Rommel, and despite some commanders being reluctant to take the risk unless conditions were perfect, the commander decided to follow Stagg’s advice and launch the attack on the 6th. His chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, Montgomery, and Admiral Bertram Ramsay agreed; however, Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory was not so sure.

James Stagg Weather Operation Overlord
Supply landings on Omaha Beach after securing the shore. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

Interestingly, between June 19 and 22, Normandy was struck by a storm that would have made the landing impossible, as the boats were not designed to withstand such rough seas. The Luftwaffe’s meteorological service had also predicted this, forecasting it as the peak of two weeks of bad weather. However, they could not be as precise as their enemies because the Allies had full control of the English Channel.

Nonetheless, the German commanders considered an invasion unlikely in such conditions, and several of them took the opportunity to attend military exercises in Rennes, in eastern Brittany. Many soldiers were granted leave, and even Rommel traveled to Germany to celebrate his wife’s birthday and meet with Hitler to convince him that, delay or not, the invasion was imminent and more armored units would be needed.

As is well known, shortly before midnight on June 5, nearly 1,250 aircraft dropped three airborne divisions behind the lines of the Atlantic Wall (the name given to the German coastal defense network), and at dawn, following a brutal naval bombardment lasting three-quarters of an hour, the famous landing of 132,000 soldiers took place in several waves.

In the end, although the weather had improved, strong winds blew, the waves were higher than expected, and the currents pushed some landing craft away from their intended arrival points. This, combined with the fact that the German forces were numerically stronger than anticipated, meant that Operation Overlord was not considered complete until nearly a week later.

For James Stagg, 1944 must have been a memorable year on a personal level as well, since his second son, Peter, was born that year. In fact, the entire war must have been significant for him, as he had his first son three years earlier after marrying Elizabeth Nancy Kidner in 1940. At the end of the war, he was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit and named an officer of the Order of the British Empire.

He continued working as a meteorologist, leading the Met Office, until his retirement in 1960. Before that, he had received other honors, such as becoming a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1954, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1957, and president of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1959. After retiring, he lived until 1975; three years earlier, he had published an account of his wartime experiences.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on October 9, 2019: James Stagg, el oficial de meteorología que decidió la fecha del Día D con su acertado pronóstico del tiempo

SOURCES

Anthony Beevor, El Día D. La batalla de Normandía

Jonathan Mayo, D-Day. Minute by minute

Met Office, The Met Office in World War One and World War Two

John Ross, Forecast for D-day: And the weatherman behind Ike’s greatest gamble

Sverre Petterssen, Weathering the storm: Sverre Petterssen, the D-Day forecast, and the rise of modern meteorology

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Analysing and forecasting the weather of early June 1944

Wikipedia, James Stagg

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