Latest news with #AlliedInvasion
Bloomberg
4 days ago
- Climate
- Bloomberg
What D-Day Tells Us About How Tech Goes from Niche to Mass
Today is the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of France that began the liberation of Western Europe. I always mark the date, but this is the first time I've been able to commemorate it so personally: Last week, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of hiking the Normandy beaches stormed by those unimaginably brave American, Canadian and British soldiers. Like most who visit, I've tried to imagine how they must have felt. Unlike most, I suspect, I also spent the walk thinking about weather forecasting. Why? The first and most important decision of D-Day wasn't made on D-Day. It was made two nights before — based on the weather forecast. And the role it played has something to teach us about how revolutionary innovations change the world.
New York Times
5 days ago
- Climate
- New York Times
The Man Whose Weather Forecast Saved the World
'If he had got the forecast wrong,' Peter Stagg said from his home an hour from Bordeaux, 'I could have been sitting in German France — not France France.' Mr. Stagg was speaking about the pivotal role his father, Group Capt. James Stagg, played in liberating France from Nazi occupation. The elder Mr. Stagg was not a general or a foot soldier, but in the final hours before one of the most consequential moments of World War II, he was the man everyone was waiting on. On June 6, 1944, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered more than 150,000 Allied troops to storm the beaches of Normandy in one of the largest seaborne invasions in history. But hours before, Eisenhower's eyes were fixed not on the battlefield, but on the skies. More precisely, on the weather report laid out before him. And the meteorologist who had created it, described by his son as 'a dour irascible Scot,' had to get it right. 'The weather forecast was a go or no-go,' said Dr. Catherine Ross, a library and archive manager at the Met Office, the weather service for the United Kingdom. 'Everything else was ready.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
