# June 1944. 160,000 soldiers, a storm coming. Go, or wait?

- Series: [The Better Guess](https://miu.fm/thebetterguess.md)
- Published: 2026-10-28
- Page: https://miu.fm/thebetterguess/june-1944-160-000-soldiers-a-storm-coming-go-or-wait

## Story

June 1944. 160,000 soldiers, a storm coming. Go, or wait?

The landing needed calm sea and the right tide, and the date was set: June the fifth. Group Captain James Stagg ran the forecast, fed by reports from ships, planes and weather stations far to the west. One came from a post office at Blacksod Point in Ireland, where Maureen Flavin, 21 that day, read a storm building over the Atlantic.

On Stagg's advice, June the fifth was called off. Then the charts showed something else: behind the storm, a short calm, on June the sixth. The German forecasters had almost no reports from the ocean. They saw only the storm, and their commander, Erwin Rommel, went home for his wife's birthday.

So Stagg said go. On June the sixth, 160,000 soldiers landed in Normandy, in weather just good enough. Weather travels from the west: whoever can see where it comes from sees tomorrow first.

Stagg wrote that waiting for the next suitable tides would have meant the worst Channel weather in twenty years. Eisenhower wrote back: "Thanks, and thank the Gods of war we went when we did."

Maureen Flavin's readings were one of many reports. The map is our own drawing; the storm and the calm are simplified.

So, go or wait? What did you say?

Sources: Met Office, "The D-Day weather forecast"; Royal Meteorological Society, "Forecasting Under Pressure: the D-Day forecast" (Catherine Ross); AP, obituary of Maureen Sweeney, December 2023; London Review of Books, 2025. Coastlines: Natural Earth (public domain).
Sounds: our own, made in code (earshot, CC0).

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