WEATHER HAS AIDED GERMANY

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 271, 4 November 1940, Page 9

WEATHER HAS AIDED GERMANY

The weather has been kind to Adolf Hitler in this war. He needed clear skies and hard, dry roads when his motorised columns roared over Poland ’-.St September, and he got it. In Norway he needed soupy weather to hide his transports from British ships and he got that, too, plus roads wet with melting slow wlrch bogged the Norwegian and British soldiers. In Northern France blue skies and gentle, warming sun smiled on his troops. But it wasn’t all luck. Early in March, for example, Netherlands police discovered Nazi spies operating secret meteorological stations in Rotterdam and Amsterdam and sending their reports to Germany by short-wave radio. Europe’s prevailing winds carry today’s weather in the western continental area to Germany to-morrow. In order to obtain accurate weather predictions Germany must have reports from the countries to the west. In Britain weather reports have been made a military secret. The importance of weather information ha 9 long been recognised by the armies of the world, most of which operate their own meteorological services quite apart from the peacetime services. The generals remember that the Spanish Armada was scattered by sudden storms and fell easy prey to English sailors; that weather drove Napoleon from Russia and later rain mired his artillery and he lost Waterloo; that in the World War rain checked the British at Loos where the failure of supplies to arrive prevented a substantial victory; and that snow and intense cold snagged the Russian drive in Finland. In order to obtain weather information spies not only operate their own weather stations in enemy territory but seek out the codes in which the enemy sends out his own reports. Radio transmissions at the front are studied by both sides in the hope that they will reveal the “ballistic wind” calculated by enemy meteorologists for their artillery. In the rear air commanders study all reports in hopes of discovering, before dispatching their bombers, whether there is fog in England or rain ip Germany.