Deaths: Courtenay Wright: D-Day With Eisenhower

COURTENAY WRIGHT, 95     (1923-2018)

Physicist Saw Normandy Beaches With Eisenhower.

November 27, 2018, Chicago Sun-Times.

Worked with some of the world's greatest military and scientific minds during his life.

As a 20-year-old Royal Navy radar officer, he decoded the message that made him one of the first in the world to know about the launch of D-Day.

The day after that, he was on the bridge of the HMS Apollo when General Dwight D. Eisenhower urged the captain to go full speed ahead so he could inspect the Normandy beaches.  The ship ran aground and "nearly decapitating the general."  Eisenhower's "startled face was inches from his own.

After the war, he was brought to to the University of Chicago by renowned physicist Enrico Fermi, a leader in the Manhattan Project.

--GreGen