How did we feel about Hiroshima bomb? This Burma veteran's frank answer will surprise you

Two British veterans of the war in the Far East have revealed how they felt on hearing the atomic bomb had been dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Don Poole and George Durrant agreed that the bombing on 6 August 80 years ago – and the follow-up attack on Nagasaki – had prevented an even greater loss of life, should an invasion of the Japanese home islands have been necessary.

Mr Poole and Mr Durrant, who are both now 101, believed Operation Downfall, which was due to have begun in November 1945, would have proven costly in terms of Allied and Japanese lives.

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But the dropping of the bomb called Little Boy by B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay - and Fat Man on Nagasaki by Bockscar - combined with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, led to the Japanese surrender.

So Operation Downfall – and the expected loss of millions of lives – never had to be put into practice.

Mr Poole, who was a Warrant Officer Class 1 in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps out in India, spoke to BFBS Forces News about the moment he found out the bomb had been dropped.

"Probably about a day or two after the first bomb went off, we heard all about it. And quite frankly, we were absolutely elated about it because we all felt that it was a prelude to the war finishing.

"It was common knowledge that we were all getting together to make a mass landing on the Japanese isles, and if that happened their whole demeanour was 'death before [dis]honour', then the fighting would be to absolutely the death, particularly there on their own ground.

"And there would have been hundreds of thousands of British troops, American troops or Canadians or whoever were involved in the landings.

"And that's, quite frankly, why we were pleased about the atom bombs."

Mr Durrant, who served in the Fourteenth Army in Burma, said he had been expecting to take part in Downfall.

But he explained: "And then the atomic bomb dropped. So we did not have to do that [invade the home islands] because if we had've done, there would have been quite a lot of casualties."