The Weather Men Behind Overlord
One of the least glamorous but most consequential judgments of the war was a forecast.
The decision to launch the Normandy invasion depended not only on ships and men but on a narrow interpretation of wind, cloud, surf, and barometric change. Allied meteorologists pieced together reports from the Atlantic, trying to predict a break in weather conditions that would never be perfect, only usable. Their work lacked the drama of sabotage or codebreaking, yet it shaped one of the central operational decisions of the twentieth century. For readers drawn to underappreciated leverage points in history, weather forecasting before D-Day is irresistible: invisible expertise, enormous consequence.