Dressed in a Royal Air Force uniform and sporting a trim moustache, Andrew Scott looks slightly queasy – as well he might. Behind him is a huge map of the Channel, and in front of him is Brendan Fraser, looming with a request: “I need a forecast,” he says. Starring in the film Pressure, based on a true story, Scott plays the meteorologist Capt James Stagg – the man who must tell Gen Eisenhower – played by Fraser – whether conditions will be suitable for the D-day landings scheduled to take place on 5 June 1944.
But a large storm is approaching the Normandy coast. The film, showing in cinemas in the UK and Ireland from 9 September unites two topics that ceaselessly fascinate the British: the second world war – and weather. It is also a rare treat for, meteorologists, not hugely represented on the big screen, who are delighted to be portrayed as the heroes of a film.
Dr Stephen Burt of the University of Reading, an adviser for the film, said the challenge Stagg and his colleagues faced was enormous. At the time, Burt explained, scientists had only recently started to use upper air data to predict the weather, and largely relied on surface measurements of pressure, temperature, dew point, wind speed and direction, as well as experience-based intuition. And that’s it.” Crucially, said Burt, the week before D-day was the hottest May week on record – a high than was only broken this year.
Then a huge storm blew up, with another major storm close behind. Prof Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, an expert in historical weather data collection and examination, including D-day, explains that there were three teams working on the D-day forecasts – although only two are depicted in the film – all feeding into Stagg. But they took different approaches and produced different forecasts.
It was up to Stagg to reconcile the results and present a recommendation to Eisenhower that would, ultimately, affect 160,000 Allied troops. He left his very pregnant wife to come and do this very important task,” Hawkins said. The teams were split about the forecast for 5 June – with Stagg concluding the conditions would be too perilous.
The landings were postponed. But by the evening of 4 June a consensus emerged: there appeared to be a small but suitable window on 6 June. The invasion was back on.
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