EYEWITNESS HIROSHIMA: The story of the atomic bomb and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

On the morning of 6 August 1945, the world changed forever.

At a quarter past eight, a single American bomber dropped a single bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In the words of one man who looked up, “a flame appeared that was even brighter than the sun”. Three days later, Nagasaki was gone too. The war was over — and the nuclear age had begun.

Eyewitness Hiroshima is the story of mankind's deadliest discovery, told from the laboratory to the rubble in the words of those who lived it. Here are the refugee scientists who first split the atom; the men who built the bomb in the secret desert city of Los Alamos; the airmen who carried it across the Pacific; the statesmen who would go on to hold the world hostage to Mutually Assured Destruction — and, most unforgettably, the ordinary people of Hiroshima who glanced up at a clear summer sky and saw the end of the world.

It is the story of how human curiosity unlocked a force that could destroy us all, and of the terrible morning when, for the first time, it was used.

Adrian Weale is a British writer and journalist and a former officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps.