Imagine being a weatherman when the entire course of WWII depended on your forecast
. . . that was the nightmare facing plumber’s son James Stagg on the eve of D-Day. Thank heavens it wasn’t Michael Fish!
When James Stagg walked into a room, even generals and air marshals went quiet. This was not just because of the Scotsman’s huge 6ft 2in frame or his dour, commanding demeanour — he was, after all, merely a group captain.
The top brass gave this 43-year-old physicist their full attention because what he had to say on the morning of Monday, June 5, 1944, would affect the lives of millions across europe.
The military leaders assembled in the map room in Southwick house — a vast Georgianstyle mansion near Portsmouth — really were the top brass. It was there the most senior Allied commanders, including General Dwight eisenhower, General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Air Marshals Arthur Tedder and Trafford Leigh-Mallory, and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, had gathered to launch D-Day.
At their disposal was the mightiest invasion force the world has ever seen, including three million men, more than 1,200 warships, some 2,500 landing craft and 13,100 aircraft.
Despite this immense power, these men were unable to control one vital element in their plans — the weather.
The man most able to do so was Stagg, the chief meteorological adviser to Operation Overlord. It was his unenviable job to study the conflicting predictions given by three separate forecasting units, then to advise eisenhower with one, unambiguous forecast.
Outside the room, an unseasonable storm was battering the windows.
It was because of that storm that D-Day was not launched on June 5 as planned. It was Stagg who had convinced the top brass to delay the invasion despite the misgivings of some, including Montgomery. But his successful forecast was to give him more authority. Once dismissed by one admiral as ‘six foot two inches of Stagg and six foot one inch of gloom’ for his pessimistic forecasts, the top brass had to listen to him now.
All they wanted to know was — could D-Day go ahead tomorrow, on June 6? General eisenhower looked at Stagg. ‘All right, Stagg,’ said the American. ‘What have you got for us this time?’ Stagg cleared his throat and began.
The story of how he and the teams under his command came to forecast the weather for one of the most pivotal events in history is the subject of a play by the award-winning actor David haig.
Opening at the Ambassadors Theatre in London’s West end on — appropriately enough — June 6, Pressure tells how Stagg coped with the most extraordinary persuasion, coercion and intimidation to come up with the ‘right’ forecast, and how he had to battle the American forecasters, who were adamant that June 5 would have been fine to launch Overlord.
The play is aptly named as Stagg not only, of course, had to study pressure charts, but he truly was under the most intolerable pressure.
If his forecast for June 6 was wrong, and the invasion floundered in a storm, D-Day would fail. That would not only mean the deaths of thousands of troops drowning in landing craft unsuitable for stormy waters, but also that the nazis would continue to occupy europe for years to come.
The fate of the war — and indeed european civilisation — weighed heavily on Stagg’s shoulders.
For a man given so much influence, he came from a very modest background.
Born in June 1900 and brought up in a small, stone terraced house in Dalkeith near edinburgh, Stagg’s father was a plumber and his mother a seamstress.
A bright boy, he went to edinburgh University after a brief spell as a mechanic in the nascent Royal Flying Corps, and gained a top degree in natural philosophy.
he then won a scholarship to enable him to take an MA, which he gained in mathematics and natural philosophy.
When one considers Stagg’s role during the war, it comes as a surprise to learn that he was not a trained meteorologist, a gap in his CV which was often held against him by his detractors.
nevertheless, Stagg had plenty of experience in meteorology, not least because he joined the Met Office in October 1923, at first as an assistant resident observer in Kew, West London.
however, his primary academic interest was in geophysics and the effects of the earth’s magnetic field. Diligent and managerial, Stagg climbed the professional ladder very quickly and, in 1931, he was given the immense responsibility of leading a British expedition to the Arctic to study magnetism and meteorology.
By 1939, and with a doctorate under his belt, Stagg was appointed superintendent of the Kew Gardens Observatory, a role which he soon left with the outbreak of war.
Posted to the Met Office HQ in Kingsway, Central London, he oversaw weather services for the army and liaised with the RAF.
As John Ross says in his definitive book, Forecast For D-Day: ‘It is obvious that among the senior officers of the Met Office, he was clearly well suited to fill the role of chief meteorologist for the planning of D-Day.’ It was a role Stagg took up in 1943, and almost from the start he came under enormous pressure. Rather than employ one team of forecasters, the top brass decided there should be three teams, with two men in each. The teams were called Widewing, Dunstable and Admiralty.
Stagg’s job was to oversee all three and find commonality in their predictions in order to present a single and definitive forecast to his superiors.
UNFORTUNATELY for him, the teams had very different methods of forecasting and, as a result, came up with very different results. It is important to remember that forecasting in the 1940s — without satellite imagery — was an extremely hit-and-miss affair and it was widely regarded that anything longer than a two- day forecast was not worth the paper it was written on.
however, the two forecasters in Widewing, the Americans Irving P. Krick and Ben holzman, , felt they could produce long-range forecasts by using their ‘analogue’ method. This essentially compared current weather patterns with historical patterns, then forecast that the weather would turn out as it had done in the past.
Today, no forecaster would set much store with such a method, as huge changes in weather patterns can be brought about by tiny variables.
even at the time, analogue forecasting was not regarded as reliable, but the self-promoting Krick had successfully managed to convince his superiors that it was.
As a result, the relationship between the three teams was fractious, and Stagg had his work cut out not only harmonising forecasts but also smoothing the ruffled feathers of those who had produced them. he doesn’t appear to have been that successful.
‘We six never agreed about anything except that Stagg was not a good meteorologist and that he was a bit of a glory hound,’ recalled Dr Lawrence hogben, who worked for the Admiralty team. Matters came to a head on June 3, just 48 hours before D-Day was supposed to have taken place.
While the American team predicted that the weather would be fine on the 5th, the other two teams were forecasting a storm.
Krick fought hard to get the Dunstable team to change their minds, but they stuck firm and Stagg was able to tell eisenhower he would have to delay the invasion — but that, crucially, there might be a break in the weather on June 6. The supreme commander found that his generals, admirals and air marshals had different opinions. Montgomery was keen to ignore the forecast and stick with June 5, while Tedder wanted to postpone.
It was up to eisenhower to make the decision. ‘Weighing all the factors, I decided that the attack
would have to be postponed,’ he recalled.
Despite the American forecasters and Montgomery, Stagg had got his way and the storm did indeed come on the 5th.
And it was at 04:15 that morning that Stagg once more found himself in front of Eisenhower, and being asked if the mighty offensive could be mounted the following morning.
After clearing his throat, Stagg began. ‘Well, I’ll give you some good news,’ he said. ‘Gentlemen, no substantial change has taken place since last time, but as I see it, the little that has changed is in the direction of optimism.’
As predicted, Stagg reckoned that there would be a break in the weather — enough to mount the invasion.
General Eisenhower then said quietly, ‘OK. Let’s go.’ ‘No one present disagreed,’ he recalled, ‘and there was a definite brightening of faces.’
Unsurprisingly Stagg, like so many others, did not sleep well the night before D-Day.
If his teams were wrong, then his forecast would result in perhaps the greatest military catastrophe ever.
Had D-Day not taken place on June 6, the ships that were already at sea would have had to return to port to refuel.
And because of the timings of the tides, that would have seen D-Day delayed to June 19 — when there was a most extraordinary storm, which many meteorologists maintain would have been almost impossible to have forecast with the technology of the time. D-Day would have been a literal wash-out.
But as dawn broke, Stagg was to be proved right. There was a break in the weather — and the rest is history.
After the war, Stagg remained in meteorology and became director of services at the Meteorological Office until 1960.
He was also president of the Royal Meteorological Society, although contrary to some reports, he was never knighted, but instead made a CB — a Companion of the Order of the Bath.
He also received the U.S. Legion of Merit. He died in 1975, not long after publishing an account of his wartime experiences in 1971.
Even today, meteorologists are divided over who really should take credit for the D-Day forecasts.
Whatever the truth — and it is a tangled web to unweave — there can be no doubt that thanks to Stagg’s leadership of a quarrelsome bunch of scientists, he presented his boss with the right answer.