Operation Downfall

They had nothing that was capable of carrying those bombs.

So that was something that they were particularly keen to get in and on the ground, especially with the planning for the Operation Downfall and the ground invasion or the seaborne invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Really interesting, yeah.

And then, of course, after VJ Day, there was this massive... scrapping programme, wasn't it? One of the things that my uncle was involved in in the last final days of his career was just ferrying old Lancasters and Halifaxers around the country to be scrapped, basically.

It deeply terrified allied planners.

They looked at the casualty rates from Okinawa and realized that Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, would be a bloodbath on an unprecedented scale.

The Pentagon was estimating half a million allied casualties.

alongside millions of Japanese civilian and military deaths.

And with Okinawa, the Americans are now 900 miles from Tokyo, which puts a further squeeze on the Japanese government.

In Washington, DC, Operation Downfall, the plan to invade Japan, is being considered.

And then in the early hours of the morning of the 16th of July 1945, an 18 to 20 kiloton explosion sends a mushroom cloud into the dawn over the desert outside Los Alamos in New Mexico.

It's the Trinity test.

However, the Land of the Rising Sun has no intention of surrendering.

Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of the island, is about to be launched, but with over a million casualties expected, the President of the United States turns to a secret weapon, the most powerful bomb ever made.

The order is given, and on the 6th and 9th of August 1945, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are reduced to ashes.

The president's name? Harry Truman, the man who dropped the bomb.