The trailer looks interesting. Most WWII buffs already know D Day was abruptly delayed because of bad weather. There’s a surreal scene in Band of Brothers. The 101st Airborne soldiers are in full combat gear on the tarmac. They’re told the mission is delayed. The scene in the movie theater is eerie. The men still have camouflage paint on their faces. Some of those men died on the beaches the next day.
I’m looking forward to see how this 6 minute scene in Band of Brothers is expanded into a movie.
Brendan Fraser is usually very good in films. He plays Ike. I haven’t seen Fraser bald before. He usually plays the leading man.
Is it coming out in theaters only? I can’t wait until it’s available online somewhere, even if I have to pay for it, since we don’t have a movie theater nearby where it might be playing. It’s a great idea for a movie. Why didn’t I think of it.
Not really, as I understand it. During WWII, military radar operators noticed that precipitation caused “noise” in their radar readings, but it wasn’t until after the war when this was studied and began to be applied to weather forecasting. As per this article on David Atlas, who worked on radar systems as a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps in WWII:
The trailer, as linked to above, shows the meteorologist using weather balloons in making his forecast.
Looks like it should be a SNL skit. “We’ve squeezed out every bit of drama about D-Day, now we bring you The Weatherman!” I like Brendan Fraser as an actor and a person but he’s a horrible choice for Eisenhower. He doesn’t look, sound or act like Ike. And for some reason a movie about the weatherman has to give Kay Somersby a prominent role. I’ll still watch when it comes on tv.
Will they show all the mistakes the Americans made? Like dropping the tanks too far from the beach and refusing to use equipment that would help clear mines and traps?
I agree. Based on the trailer, this movie seems to be telling a particular story about D-Day; it’s likely not a general telling of the D-Day tale as a whole.
Of course he was a historical figure. It’s a very well established fact that weather played a major role in deciding when to invade. They scrubbed the mission on June 5th because of weather. They couldn’t keep troops on ships indefinitely. The tides and moon would not be as favorable for another month. The danger wasn’t in waiting a month, it was that the Germans might learn about the plan if they didn’t go until July:
All that makes the weather report very important. It doesn’t make a guy putting together a report and handing it to Eisenhower particularly dramatic. To make it dramatic you have have him standing in the rain and yelling at people.
Stagg met Eisenhower on the evening of 4 June. Using Sweeney’s forecast data, he and his meteorological team predicted that the weather would improve enough for the invasion to proceed on 6th.
Reportedly, Eisenhower asked him how accurate the prediction was, and when Sweeny said “50/50”, Eisenhower pointed out that a coin flip would have been as useful.
The reason for my initial comment was that since most movies about WW2 are made in the US for US audiences, they often give the impression that the Americans did all the heavy lifting and ignoring the previous four years.
