My father was mostly known as a famous geologist* but he was very proud of his service in World War II. As an officer during the war, he was trained as an oceanographic meteorologist in the U.S. Army Air Corps and was awarded the bronze star for his work in forecasting the surf conditions during the Normandy D-Day invasion. One of his prize possessions is his original copy of the top secret plans for the D-Day invasion known to historians as the Neptune Monograph.
The 72nd anniversary of the Normandy invasion is on June 6th, 2016. In honor of my father, and all the veterans of World War II here is a gallery of photos of the Neptune Monograph.
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- NOTE to COXSWAIN or NAVIGATOR – Building landmarks, especially near the beach, may be destroyed before any craft land. Terrain features, therefore, are much more reliable for visual navigation from panoramic shoreline sketch above. green solid and broken lines with letter at each end on chart above refer to Beach Gradients on reverse side of this sheet. Also on reverse side are Sunlight and Moonlight Table, data on Inshore currents and Tidal Stages
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- Some of the pages have literal cut and pasted content
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- My father John C. Crowell at 97 years old with the Neptune Monograph
My father passed away on May 13th, 2015, an hour after his 98th birthday. He lived a remarkable life and spent his last 25 years in Montecito, California near Santa Barbara.
Several years ago my father wrote a book about his wartime experiences called Surf Forecasting for Invasions during World War II available at martymagic.com/books
There is a Amazon Kindle version of Surf Forecasting for Invasions during World War II
There is a Kindle version of the Chapter 4 Forecasting Waves for the Normandy Invasion
*My father was former chairman of the geology department at UCLA and UCSB, member U.S. National Academy of Sciences, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, Professor Emeritus UCSB, Penrose medal, Fulbright Award, Guggenheim Scholarship, etc.
Very nice, Marty. This is a very important piece of history. Thank you for sharing about your father’s service.
What a career!!! God Bless your father, Marty! I had no idea. He was THE man as far as D-Day goes. Congrats on a job well done and thank him for us for his service to our country with our deepest gratitude.
This is awesome! What an amazing piece of history, and a fantastic man. Fascinating to see the original, held by the original! Thank you for sharing. BTW I found this because of an IMGUR post. http://imgur.com/gallery/XYxpL
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Wow. Thank you for sharing this piece of history. And congrats to your dad!
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Hi Marty,
The AEG News is printing a short bio of your father as one of our deceased members. Could you send the photo of him holding his book in the original high quality so that we may print it? If we could have it within a week, that would be great.
Thank you,
Anna Saindon
AEG News Editor
Hello Anna, Thank you for honoring my father. We have just e-mailed you a full resolution photo of my father holding his original copy of the Neptune Monograph.
With Thanks,
Marty Bobroskie
Dear Marty, Thank you so much for this post. I’m sorry it took me so long to find it on Imgur! I had the great honor and privilege to meet your father 12 September 2013. I am writing a book about WWII amphibious landings and he very graciously agreed to meet with me and discuss his part in preparing what has been called the most important weather forecast in history. My wife and I spent the afternoon with him and he answered all my questions about the D-Day forecast. He even gave me a copy of his book and signed it for me. He also let me borrow and copy his MS thesis to get an even better idea of the oceanography involved in the forecast conditions. I have two questions: (1) Have you posted the other pages of the Neptune Monograph anywhere, (2) Did he write any parts of the monograph? Again, thank you for this posting and please let me say I admire your father and his colleagues very much. Tom Mitchell
Hello Tom,
As I’m sure you know, my father passed away two years ago. Although I have not posted other pages of the Neptune Monograph online, should you ever be in my area, I would be happy to show the plans to you. Kind Regards, Marty