For the landings along the coast of French Morocco in North Africa, General Patton called for at least three days with sea swells below eight feet. The weather where the boats were putting in should be clear so that the Air Force could support the landings, dropping men and supplies. Once the landings were committed, there could be no turning back.

At the same time, to the east and north, where enemy aircraft would strike from, it would be well to have cloudiness that screened the landings from air attack until they were well under way and Allied airfields were established. It was a demanding order.

Krick talked things over with Professor H. H. Sverdrup, Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California, an expert on Pacific Sea swell prediction. Combining Professor Sverdrup's expertise in sea behavior with his own in long-range weather prediction, Krick, on October 17, prepared a chart for transmission to General Patton aboard the flagship of Operation occur between November 7 and November 14. On the seventh, the sea would be at a peak of fifteen feet, extremely high for that time of year, but it would be falling, reaching five feet or less by the fourteenth of the month.

As it turned out, the peak came on November 1, two days early. If the time of the peak had been two days late instead, the landings could have been a disaster. But they were successfully carried out beginning on November 8.

Following the success of the sea and swell forecasts for Operation Torch, a number of Air Force weathermen were trained in the method used. They were assigned to perform this function for all amphibious landings for the rest of the war. Two such specialists were stationed in the British Admiralty to handle the task for the Allies during the invasion of Normandy.

So far as Colonel Zimmerman was concerned, however, Krick was a total loss. As General Patton's tanks pushed farther into Africa and started the enemy on his long retreat, Zimmerman characterized his performance as "unsatisfactory" in the four efficiency report categories of handling officers and men, performance of field duties, administrative and executive duties and leadership.

In the space provided for "a brief general estimate of this officer in your own words," Zimmerman wrote, among other things, that Krick "has repeatedly disregarded instructions to deal through established military channels. In my judgment he is also disloyal and unreliable. In comparing this officer with all other officers of his grade and component known to me, I would place him among the lower third." Had these deficiencies been brought to Krick's attention before this report was written? "Yes," Zimmerman wrote. Had there been any improvement? "None."

General Arnold dissented with Zimmerman. Glancing at the report, he quickly drew a heavy line through the middle of the sheet and boldly wrote, "EXCELLENT-SUPERIOR!" and signed his name.

With the invasion of Africa smoothly launched, General Arnold severed all connections with the Weather Bureau and removed the id November 14. On the seventh, the Air Force men who had been housed under its roof. He relieved Colonel Zimmerman as chief of the Air Force Weather Bureau Directorate and, on Krick's recommendations, named Colonel HuntBassett, another former Krick student, to take his place. Colonel Bassett formed a "Weather Information Section," commanded by yet another former student of Krick's - Colonel Don Yates.

"Okay," Arnold told Krick after these changes had been made, "what do you need now to implement your plan?"

"I want forty years of Northern Hemisphere daily weather maps which we can study and classify before I tackle anything beyond what we're doing now," Krick replied. He felt that the Axis powers had such maps going back at least that number of years. "I'll need about forty men. I'll go back to CalTech and with Millikan's cooperation set up a map analysis unit. The Air Force students who are there can help. We'll have wirephoto and teletype communication with the Signal Corps in Washington and make forecasts for all theaters of war while we're doing the maps. Hell, it will be just as though we were sitting in Washington, but without the static. We can get some work done."

In two weeks, becoming known as "Long-Range Forecast Unit A," Krick and his people were busy at CalTech. They occupied the entire Astrophysics building along with Culbertson Hall, the school auditorium-all gladly turned over to them by Dr. Millikan. General Arnold arranged with the Weather Bureau to plot daily data on hemispheric base maps from 1899 to 1940. The maps were then analyzed with fronts and isobars (lines connecting all points with the same barometric pressure) by Krick and his crew and by the meteorology group at New York University, each group taking twenty years of maps.

The maps were drawn for 1200 Greenwich Mean Time, the hour used as the prime time basis for construction of weather maps throughout the world. They were then typed in terms of the Cal-Tech method and classified for North America, Europe and the North Atlantic Ocean.

Meanwhile, if Dr. Millikan hoped that a more liberal outlook on Krick's long-range forecasting might be taking root in Washington now that its value had been demonstrated a number of times, he was disabused by a letter from Weather Bureau Chief Reichelderfer in mid-April 1943.

"I feel that specific forecasts beyond five or six days . . . may be misleading and are often inadvisable for military purposes, to say the least," Reichelderfer warned.

As the weeks passed, the Weather Bureau chief also fell to fretting about the operations of the peacetime associates Krick had left behind to keep his private weather service alive while he was in uniform. The income paid them a small livelihood and was used to carry on further research.

Reichelderfer wrote to Millikan twice about the matter, suggesting that he might want "to look into the present functioning of the so-called 'Research Council,' " as the group was called. Reichelderfer indicated that his chief concern was for the good name of CalTech.

The immediate cause of Reichelderfer's distress, it seemed, was that Krick's people had "knowingly" broken censorship regulations by getting weather information, "without proper authority," from a man who was also an observer for the weather bureau, on an unpaid basis. Millikan strongly objected to Reichelderfer's use of the word "knowingly," commenting that it was "just that kind of impugning of motives . . . that lies at the bottom of about nine-tenths of the difficulties that center about present forecasting procedures and situations."

Millikan went on to defend at great length the efforts of Krick and his group. His concern went beyond fending off the Weather Bureau's attacks. He also wanted to spread the word on what they were accomplishing, notably to the British, whose attitude in general toward long-range forecasting was much like that of the United States Weather Bureau.

In mid-July of 1943 Millikan saw an opportunity to speak of the subject to Field Marshall Sir John Dill, chief of the British Military Mission to the United States, at a luncheon for Sir John and General Arnold in Washington. But he was suddenly called away from the table by a phone call.

In an immediate letter of apology to the distinguished Briton, Millikan wrote: "I had hoped to have a word with you about the development of American long-range forecasting with which our group at the California Institute of Technology has been intimately associated, and which might perhaps be of as much value to the British operations as General Arnold feels that it is being to the American Air Corps, as well as to other branches of the military service."

Millikan suggested, however, that Sir John could "get a good picture of the situation from your Mr. Hopkins of the British Central Scientific Office" in Washington. "Mr. Hopkins spent a day with us last week and gave me the impression that he was a man of very great grasp of all those related meteorological and radio problems which represent perhaps the most significant scientific advances in aid of the war which have been made in the past few years. I gained through him the impression that the British were not as conversant with the American activities in this field . . . as they might desire to be."

The British would soon be learning more-and would be as unreceptive as the U.S. Weather Bureau.

"Understand that you will go to England soon," General Arnold added in a handwritten postscript to a letter to Krick on October 10, 1943. "That will put you in a position where you can get a much better picture of our weather problems in connection with bombing than we have now-Good luck and see me upon your return. HHA."