My grandfather was a weatherman stationed on an island in the south pacific. He almost never talked about his experiences in the war, but he once told us that he was asked to give a weather report for Hiroshima on the day the bomb was dropped. He didn't understand the significance of why they wanted the weather for Hiroshima until later. Though he did say that he and a buddy went to a hill to look over the airfield after being told that the area was restricted all of the sudden. They saw a bomber, but he said he didn't know if it was actually the Enola Gay or some sort of decoy bomber.
Its funny I was just reading Timmy Mallett, who was a morning TV host during the early-90's, tweet that his mum was Stagg's secretary during this time, ad witnessed the decision to go -
Fun fact - there is some disagreement as to what the "D" in D-Day stands for. It seems most people agree it's just D for Day (so Day Day, sort of like how the LA Angels translates to the the angels angels), although some people think it's short for decision.
In french, we say "le jour J" (literally "the D Day") to mean "the day where the thing happens" without knowing the actual date, J is like a variable here. Then you can talk about "le jour J-1", "J-2"...
Is the way this piece presents, e.g., "D-Day -21" and "D-Day +2" historically accurate? I had always thought it was D-21 and D+2, explaining D-Day as being the D±0.
As I recall it's for Day, because there's also H-hour for the time of the day to start, per Oxford Dictionaries "the time of day at which an attack, landing, or other military operation is scheduled to begin." "they assured the Marines that at H-hour the reef would be covered by five feet of water"
I was told that in addition to codifying D+1 etc that "D-Day" was also phonetically derived from the term "the day", pronounced "thee" indicating a significant day in a still somewhat ambiguous way.
