Audio Description

Robert C. Bundgaard begins by describing his family and youth in Denver, Colorado, and his early interest in music and mathematics. He discusses his education at the University of Denver; work at the Mount Evans Observatory under Joyce Stearns, investigating the influence of [cosmic] radiation on fruit flies, and graduate work at Columbia University. He comments on his activities as an aviation cadet in meteorology at UCLA under Joe Kaplan and Jac Bjerknes, and other instructors. He reports on subsequent work at the Pentagon Weather Central as part of the Long Range Forecasting Units, describing forecasting techniques using desk calculators. Next, he details his posting to southern England to help forecast for the Allied strategic bombing campaign and pending invasion of Normandy, and discusses his group’s upper air forecasting efforts, Soviet weather observations, and the 21st Weather Squadron. Finally, he describes the consensus D-Day invasion (Operation Overlord) forecast as it was prepared by the various Allied meteorology groups, commenting on the activities of Don Yates, Ben Holzman, Irving Krick, Sverre Petterssen, and J. M. Stagg. Oral history interview with Robert C. Bundgaard, 1998. Interviewed by Melvin Holzman and Diane Rabson. 1 sound cassettes (ca. 1 hr.) : analog, mono + transcript (19 pgs.). AMS 134; one physical version (one master). Forms part of American Meteorological Society Oral History Project.