D Day Almost Didn't Happen Because of the WEATHER

The largest invasion in history almost never launched, and the thing that nearly stopped it was not the Germans. It was the weather.

June 1944. Thousands of ships and over a hundred thousand men waited for one narrow window of tide and moonlight. Then a storm rolled in and Eisenhower postponed the whole thing.

His forecasters spotted one brief break in the weather. If he waited past June 6, the tides would not line up again for about two weeks. So on a stormy night he made the call: OK, we go.

That same bad weather fooled the Germans. Their forecasters saw no gap and assumed no invasion was coming, so key commanders left their posts. When the Allies hit five beaches at dawn, the defense was off balance. On Omaha, one lead company still lost nearly all its men.

By nightfall the Allies were ashore in Normandy for good. The invasion that hinged on a single forecast cracked open the western wall of Hitler's Europe.

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