Forecasters

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF)

Group Captain James M. Stagg, D.Sc., Chief  Meteorologist , SHAEF. 20-year veteran of the civilian Meteorological Office which provides weather services to the Royal Air Force and the British Army as well as to the general public.  Son of seamstress and handyman. Led British Polar Year Expedition to Arctic.  Consummate scientist and administrator. Geophysicist at heart. Deepest forecasting experience: two years in Iraq. Roundly disliked by other meteorologists and by American brass except Ike.

Colonel Donald N. Yates, Deputy Chief Meteorologist, SHAEF.  1931 United States Military Academy (West Point) graduate, received Army Air Force meteorologist training at Cal Tech from Irving P. Krick. Earned Distinguished Service Medal by setting up weather data exchange with Russians. Commanded US Strategic and Tactical Air Force (USSTAF) weather section. Team player who insured that his forecasters lined-up behind final forecast for D-day.

USSTAF – Widewing

Lieutenant Colonel Irving P. Krick, Ph.D., lead briefer, USSTAF. Refined method of long-range weather prediction based on historic weather maps. Believed that weather could be predicted weeks in advance. Got into meteorology to make money preparing forecasts for airlines, agriculture, and movie studios. Chaired meteorology department at Caltech. Insisted the weather would be good on 4 June, and tried to convince Ike when Stagg’s forecast didn’t go his way. If Ike had listened to Krick, the invasion would have failed.

Meteorological Office – Dunstable

Sverre Petterssen, Norwegian, lead upper air forecaster. Studied intensively with Vilhelm and Jacob Bjerknes pioneers of Bergen school weather front theory. Chaired meteorology department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology which he left when war was declared to better serve his country from England.

C. K. M. Douglas, lead surface forecaster.  Joined Met Office in 1919. As a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps during WWI, he was among the first to understand how wind speed and direction, temperature and air pressure varied with altitude and influenced surface weather.  Known for encyclopedic memory of English weather.

Royal Navy Meteorological Service – Citadel

Instructor Lt. Commander Geoffrey M. Wolfe, Royal Navy, lead forecaster, Admiralty, 60-day advanced meteorology course Admiralty Compass Observatory, sea-duty HMS Barham until sunk in 1941. Assigned to weather service in 1942.

Instructor Lieutenant Lawrence G. Hogben, Royal New Zealand Navy, second lead forecaster, Admiralty, Rhodes Scholar, won Distinguished Service Cross as plot officer on the HMS Sheffield during battle of the Barents Sea in 1942.