From How to Make Luck: The Seven Secrets Lucky People Use to Succeed :
The target date for the attack was set for early June. But the weather, which had been flawless during the first three days of the month, took a turn for the worse. By June 4, a drizzle became a cold, driving rain, transforming the English Channel into a rolling, violent sea. On June 5, as the rain beat against hi window, Eisenhower was told by his staff that there was a good chance of a thirty-six-hour break in the storm during the early hours of June 6. Upon hearing that, Eisenhower gave the green light to invade. The storm did break as expected, as the rest is history.
Were Eisenhower's decision and success pure luck? Not exactly. While the break in the weather certainly was a stroke of good fortune, Eisenhower's decision to believe the weather forecast he was given wasn't based on superstition or military restlessness. Aware that military history was jammed with generals who mistakenly sent thousands of their men to death out of sheer frustration with the enemy or the weather, Eisenhower had taken steps to limit his chances of failure. Four weeks prior to the invasion, he met privately each day with Capt. J. M. Stagg, a twenty-eight-year-old Scottish meteorologist. Stagg would bring Eisenhower the weather forecast and then remain for a half hour to answer dozens of Eisenhower's questions.
Eisenhower's biographer and D-Day author and historian, Stephen Ambrose, told me that Eisenhower went through this meticulous process to get a strong feel for Stagg's reasoning. Eisenhower wanted to have a clear sense of how Stagg made his predictions and how accurate they were. Eisenhower knew that the weather over southeast England, the English Channel, and France's Normandy region was unpredictable, and had anticipated that a successful invasion would depend on the accuracy of a forecast.
In effect, Eisenhower had taken careful, calculated steps to improve the odds of success and reduce his odds of failure. While Eisenhower's decision to invade may have seemed like a lucky call, he had actually taken a great deal of care to improve the odds of a favorable outcome. Had Eisenhower not sized up the accuracy of his weather forecaster, he may have doubted Stagg's prediction in light of the horrible weather at the time and delayed the invasion, giving up the critical element of surprise.
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