Forecasting D-Day

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 582 Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The D-Day planners said that everything would depended the weather. They needed 'a quiet day with not more than moderate winds and seas and not too much cloud for the airmen, to be followed by three more quiet days'. But who would make the forecast? The Meteorological Office? The US Air Force? The Royal Navy? In the event, it was all three. In this diary piece published in 1994, Lawrence Hogben, a New Zealand-born meteorologist and Royal Navy officer, describes the way this forecasting by committee worked, and why they very almost chose the wrong day. Read by Stephen Dillane Find the article and further reading on the episode page: https://lrb.me/ddaypod Watch the short film based on this piece: https://lrb.me/ddayyt Sponsored links: Learn more about Serious Readers: www.seriousreaders.com/lrb Sign up to the LRB's Close Readings subscription: In Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:13.6	At now the weather forecast. On this week's episode of the London Review of Books podcast, Stephen Delane reads Lawrence
1:18.0	Hogburn's diary from May 1994, in which he wrote about forecasting the weather to pick
1:22.6	a date for the D-Day landings in June 1944. The most important weather forecast in the history of the world by Lawrence Hogben.
1:33.1	A diary for the London Review of Books first published in May 1994, read by Stephen Delane.
1:43.5	Everything on the Normandy Beachhead will hang on your weather, said the day planners,
	...

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