That was Group Captain James Stagg, the English meteorologist, who had both the awesome brains the the huge guts to call a "go" after first calling the 4'th a no go. Now for a moment think about what was laid on this mans shoulders. Had he called it off entirely I dont know when the next effort could be mounted but it must have been at least until July since the entire thing had to be set like a clock and needed the right moon phase, tides...ect
And every day they waited increased the chances the Germans would discover their deceptions and where they "really" wanted to land. Which would have been a disaster. Every day we waited strengthened the enemy and weakened us. The morale of the troops alone would have taken a big hit.
So what if he got it wrong and we launched in weather to severe and the Landings failed? Theres no doubt we would have taken very heavy casualties and theres no way we could have tried again in 1944 and then who knows what would have happened.
Stalin was already paranoid and always at risk of making a separate peace. Sure you could say eventually we would have had the Bomb and that would be it but dont forget the Nazi's both discovered and weaponized the nerve gas's Tabun,Sarin, and Soman. Would "V" weapons with these terrible gas's delivered by them on the cities of Western Europe had made Truman think twice about using an atomic bomb on Germany? The Germans were also designing a system to Launch V2's off a submarine which would have put America cities at risk too. Thats all our first submarine launched nuke was anyway. The "Regulus" system was just a V2 on a diesel boat basically.
But we never had to worry about any of this thanks to a hell of a weatherman who got it right.
