
D-Day: How a British Oceanographer's Invention Decided Normandy's Fate - nikse
https://www.inverse.com/article/45649-d-day-tide-predicting-machine
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jessaustin
Now _that 's_ an exaggerated title. The headline on the page has "74 Years
Ago, a Brilliant Invention Decided When D-Day Would Occur" not "Decided
Normandy's Fate". I was under the impression that hundreds of thousands of
people fought in that battle? Did they not influence the outcome somewhat?

~~~
megaman22
One could argue that what really decided Normandy's fate, and the fate of all
of occupied France, was Operation Bagration, the real gut-punch that smashed
the Wehrmacht and broke them, hundreds of miles to the east.

The scale and savagery of war on the eastern front is so mind boggingly
incomprehensible, and relatively unknown for an English-speaking audience. If
you have not, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Ghosts of the Ostfront series of
podcasts, to get even a sense of the insanity.

The western front was, in totality, almost a sideshow in comparison to the
titanic, inhuman struggle raging from Black to Baltic seas.

~~~
dirktheman
The same goes for WWI. I'm not downplaying the horrors and scale of the Marne,
Somme and Aisne, but the siege of Przemyśl, the battle of Lemberg were
comparable yet not nearly as infamous.

When we think of WWI we think of the trenches in Belgium and northern France.
Sure, Belgium was hit pretty hard (120,000 casualties, about 1,7% of
population) but compare that to Serbia: 1 million casualties, a staggering 25%
of population... and most people don't even realize that Serbia was affected
by the war in the first place.

~~~
megaman22
The austro-hungarian war, and its futility is also incredible - I don't have
the title now, but I've read something outlining their mobilization plan up to
Tannenberg. The whole Balkans region that started the conflagration is so
confusing and bloody...

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AcerbicZero
Its an impressive example of human knowledge and ingenuity, although the
article does get a little overly dramatic with it.

Perhaps that's a side effect of how crowded that period of history is with
these kinds of things. It's hard to look at any date range between 1939-1945
and not find at least one or two accomplishments which seem almost impossible
for the time and technology.

~~~
Waterluvian
I'm watching WWII in color and when they got to late 1944 and the rockets, I
was pretty floored. I thought, "holy crap that was close. Imagine what could
have been if they had mature rocketry even just five years earlier..."

~~~
WalterBright
Not much. The V-2's guidance system was primitive, and so where it hit was
fairly random. Force has to be concentrated on targets of military value to be
effective.

Consider the vastly more bombs dropped on Germany day and night, far more than
V-2's ever could have dropped. Aside from destroying the oil infrastructure,
it's hard to see the military value of destroying city after city, and that
bombing was much more precise than the V-2s.

For rockets to be effective, one needs either precision guidance or a nuclear
warhead.

~~~
Waterluvian
I was thinking more about how rocketry leads to jet planes. But also, my
understanding was that bombs were awfully inaccurate. Not that pre-gps long
range missiles are any better. My understanding was that the ramjet rockets
were pretty terrifying too and did hit cities often.

~~~
WalterBright
> did hit cities often

Randomly hitting a city has a very small chance of hitting anything with
military value.

> terrifying

Sure, but it turns out that terrifying citizens tends to harden their resolve
to fight on, rather than surrendering. On both sides.

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btilly
Here is a summary.

He built an analog computer that could predict tide levels. They wanted
extreme tides so that at low tide the navy could map out the traps the Nazis
left, and at high tide they could land lots of troops. It turned out that
acceptable tide conditions happened on June 5, 6, and 7.

The actual invasion happened on June 6.

~~~
walshemj
They also sent x subs mini 2/3 man subs to drop divers to take samples of the
beach surfaces

~~~
ggm
They also collected as many postcards, maps, personal photos as they could, to
build up photomosiac maps and models of the beaches.

Anthony Beevor talks about a lot of this stuff, as does Carlo D'Este and
others. Great reads.

(my mum was an art college student at the time, and amongst other things she
was drawing maps. My Aunt was doing technical drawings for the mulberry
harbours. Everyone pitched in)

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crikli
Ok fine. The title is somewhat exaggerated.

Look at this story as another in a series of extreme efforts in 1943/1944
leading up to D-Day, the absence of which could have resulted in a different
outcome. The portable Mulberry harbors. The Higgins boat. Operation
Fortitude's ghost army. Juan Pujol's network of fictitious German agents. And
even with all of those efforts, had Hitler decided to move Von Schweppenburg's
panzers, D-Day would likely have failed.

So yeah, again, the title is a bit breathless, however it's not a stretch to
say that much like at Incheon getting the tidal flows wrong would have
significantly altered history.

~~~
WalterBright
The Allies had total air superiority, and the panzers would have had a very
hard time against that.

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the6threplicant
TL;DR: Invest in blue-sky research since you might never know when you need
it.

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paidleaf
What decided Normandy's fate was germany's lack of a navy and their air force
and soldiers being locked down on the eastern front.

Germany had like 5K soldiers on the beach with no air and no naval support
against the combined might of the US and UK.

D-Day was 200K US/UK soldiers + US/UK navy + US/UK air force vs 5K germany
soldiers.

It was such a rout and easy victory that most of our casualties on that day
was friendly fire and accidental drowning rather than germany bullets.

D-Day is so overplayed in our media. The real fighting was in the east.

~~~
tntn
The typical number for German combatants is closer to 50k, so I'm curious what
your source is for 5k.

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gandhium
He also said "real fighting was in the east", so you can guess the source.

Edit: also the claim "most of our casualties on that day was friendly fire and
accidental drowning" is pretty ridiculous.

~~~
paidleaf
> He also said "real fighting was in the east", so you can guess the source.

It's called stats.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_\(World_War_II\))

The vast majority of the german military and casualties, were in the eastern
front.

> Edit: also the claim "most of our casualties on that day was friendly fire
> and accidental drowning" is pretty ridiculous.

It's pretty much common sense. Considering the low number of german troops,
the poor coordination on our side and of course the odds of accidents and
friendly fire incidents. It's pretty much a statistical certainty that most of
the deaths on D-Day were accidents and friendly fire. But lets throw out
common sense and statistics out the window.

The germans had no navy. They had no air force. They had nothing. Against the
might of the US and British power on D-Day. But we can pretend that the
germans managed a 2 to 1 casualty victory. Or I'm sure that's what your
"sources" will try to convince us.

