Maureen Sweeney, the Irish woman whose weather report convinced the Allied Forces to wait 24 hours before launching the D-Day landings, has died aged 100.
Maureen, who was 21 in June 1944, worked at Blacksod Lighthouse, a remote lighthouse and weather station on the Mayo coast that supplied weather reports to the Allied Forces during the Second World War.
On the night of June 3, 1944, Maureen became the first person to report a severe incoming storm from the Atlantic, prompting the Allied command to postpone the Normandy landings until June 6.
Maureen and her husband Ted sent the weather report to authorities in Britain and received a call shortly afterward asking them to confirm and check the report.
"We took the weather in the ordinary way and passed it on. We got a message back again saying, ‘Please check and repeat’. So I went back but I was right, the barometer had dropped," Maureen told the Irish Sun in 2016.
She recalled receiving another call from the same woman an hour later, again asking her to check and confirm her report.
Maureen didn't know this at the time, but the Allied leaders gathered in London were relying on her weather reports to judge whether they should proceed with the D-Day launch as planned.
They ultimately decided to delay the Normandy landings by 24 hours based on the weather reports supplied by Maureen and her husband.
In 2021, Maureen received a special US House of Representatives honor for the role she played in shaping the D-Day landings.
Her family announced that Maureen died peacefully at the Sonas Tí Aire Nursing Home nursing home in Belmullet, Co Mayo, on Sunday, December 17.
She is survived by her children Ted, Gerry, Vincent, and Emer in addition to a number of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.
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