Portsmouth:
Jim Stagg, the softly-spoken Scottish group-captain who is Eisenhower's chief meteorologist, met the supreme commander twice a day to brief him on weather prospects for the beginning of June. As the meetings continued, Stagg says, "he could tell from my expression, even before I presented the forecast, what I was going to say."
At the end of May the Atlantic charts looked so black that "Ike" ordered a 24-hour postponement of Overlord to 6 June. Beyond that, nothing could be done for a fortnight. "Mercifully, the almost unbelievable happened," Stagg says. "I told him on Sunday we could expect an interlude between two depressions. I convinced him the quieter period would arrive on Monday and continue into Tuesday.
After the Monday meeting had confirmed the forecast, Ike came out to his motor car and said to Kay Summersby, his English driver: "D-Day's on. Nothing can stop it now."
The Germans have had weather stations on Iceland, Greenland, Spitzbergen and Jan Mayen Island, between Norway and Iceland. The Allies seized them, leaving the Germans to get their weather forecasts by looking out of the window. They decided the invasion was off and Rommel went to Ulm for the birthday of his wife on 6 June.