News Release

MADISON, WI, April 14, 2008 -- Serving in the British War Office's Combined Operations department, crystallographer John Bernal was asked to prepare for a massive, opposed landing in France. His specific task was to predict the trafficability for military vehicles of the beaches and ground immediately inland of the beaches.

Murray Lark (Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, U.K.) describes this unprecedented challenge in "Science on the Normandy Beaches: J.D. Bernal and the Prediction of Soil Trafficability for Operation Overlord," Soil Surv. Horiz. 49:12-15 (Spring, 2008).

Bernal recalled swimming at Arromanches through a suspension of peat and predicted that the beach was likely to be treacherous because of its base of clay and peat. Bernal and his team studied similar environments in England, and a colleague, R.A. Bagnold showed that the view of beach dynamics of the time was wrong.

An added challenge was obtaining information without drawing enemy attention to Allied interest in the Norman coast. Their efforts included aerial photography missions disguised as bombing raids and a discrete campaign to collect holiday photographs from members of the British public.

The group also combed historical records for information, concluding that an old village name suggested a marsh and that an inland area was once a harbor, long since filled with silt. Gradually a picture of the nature of the beach evolved, culminating in a clandestine mission to collect soil samples in enemy territory.