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Pressure



Recently saw PRESSURE, a movie about the meteorology behind the D-Day landings at Normandy in 1944. 

It was somewhat fictionalized, a docudrama rather than a documentary. But if you want the underlying story without the fictionalization, go to  The Real Story Behind 'Pressure,' a WWII Drama About James Stagg's D-Day Weather Forecast (Smithsonian). 

General Eisenhower had to make the call, "we go" or "we hold until the storm passes." Or maybe "we look for a window within the storm." And he had to make it in epistemological circumstances that we have to work to recreate today. After all, they didn't have satellites in orbit conveying detailed information about every cloud around the globe.  They had weather stations, high-altitude balloons, lots of detailed historical records that experts could pore over without finding decisive patterns for a particular call-- and guesswork. Lots of guesswork.

The hero of the story is James Stagg, a Scotsman who has to persuade General Eisenhower twice -- first, that the original date would be too dangerous, sticking to it could lead to an invasion force coinciding with storm that just might sweep it away: second, he had to persuade him not to delay it for weeks, but just for one day, because the day AFTER the originally scheduled D-Day would constitute a lull in the storm, a window of opportunity that Rommel's soldiers, hunkered down for continued storming, would never expect. 

I enjoyed the movie. I also enjoyed the word play of the title. Meteorologists often talk of high versus low pressure systems.  But the meaning of that word that first comes to mind when one is watching this movies doesn't involve the sort that barometers measure.

Eisenhower at one point tells Stagg, "The course of the war could turn on getting this call right."

No pressure, though.  

Respect is due to Andrew Scott, playing James Stagg, and Brendan Fraser as Dwight D. Eisenhower. 


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