From the Irish Meteorological Service, Met Éireann, December 2023:
Maureen Sweeney (1923-2023)
An Irish woman whose weather observations at Blacksod Point, Co. Mayo in 1944 changed the timings of the D-Day landings, Maureen Sweeney, has died aged 100 on 17th December 2023.
Maureen (née Flavin) was working in Blacksod post office at the time and took that vital hourly reading on her 21st birthday, 3rd June 1944. The readings at the weather station at the lighthouse showed a steady wind and increasing rain as the pressure continued to drop. This indicated unsettled, stormy weather that would affect the English Channel on 5th June, the planned date for the D-Day landings known as Operation Overlord. When the reports reached England, officials rang the post office at Blacksod to confirm the readings directly. Maureen did not learn of the importance of her readings until 1956. During an interview with RTÉ, Maureen noted that the US Army “could arrange everything, but they couldn’t pre-arrange the weather.”
The area of low pressure, identified by Sweeney, resulted in strong southwesterly winds in the English Channel. This would have made the seas too rough for the landing of troops, with too much cloud for bombing operations to be successful. A temporary ridge of high pressure that followed on 6th June offered the perfect window for the landings. German weather forecasters were far more limited in the information available to them, as they had limited vessels in the Atlantic and their weather stations in Greenland had been shut down. Although early June was identified as a possible date for invasion by German military planners, the expected continuation of the disturbed pattern of weather was considered to make a landing impossible. They stood down some of their troops on defensive duties, leaving the coast without numerous senior officers....
....MUCH MORE
I thought about our headline and whether it would be hyperbole and decided it was accurate.
She really did save hundreds if not thousands of lives by getting it right and by saving those lives very likely saved the entire operation.
At the end of the article, Met Éireann uses a famous picture of Omaha Beach on D-Day known as "Taxis to Hell – and Back – Into the Jaws of Death" as their graphic. The scene was shot looking out over disembarking troops at the beach and the steep bluffs rising from the beach. Despite this being one of the safer landing zones on "Bloody Omaha" the transport ship launching this landing craft, the USS Samuel Chase, still had four of its landing craft swamped in the high seas. Two days earlier in higher seas and it is possible the number could have been four or five times larger. And been repeated up and down the Normandy coast. Another indication of how rough the seas still were is one unit of 29 amphibious tanks lost 27 swamped in the water before they reached the beach.
She done good.
When I say relatively safer it is only in comparison with the truly horrific experience 1500 meters to the west that we've looked at a few times:
D-Day "First Wave at Omaha Beach"
If interested see also: "D-Day: A Little Boat that Made the Difference"
