AN RAF veteran from near York will speak on national radio this week about his experiences when he visited Hiroshima following the world's first atomic bomb attack.

Ernest Astley, 87, of Dunnington, is to feature on a programme on BBC Radio 5 Live marking the 70th anniversary of the nuclear blast in Japan, which is thought to have killed up to 166,000 people.

He was a Spitfire mechanic with the RAF's 17th fighter squadron when he was posted in 1946 to Japan, where he was among the first British observers of the aftermath of the bomb, including a view of the ruined city from a Dakota transport plane.

Mr Astley, who has been featured in The Press previously, will tell listeners grim details of what he witnessed.

He will say in the pre-recorded interview: "Everything was green. And then suddenly everything went brown. There was only the odd tree stood up. It was quite something to see that as we looked out of the aircraft and saw the brown where it had all been burnt.

"When we got to Iwakuni we decided to go into Hiroshima. We caught a train into Hiroshima and then we saw all the buildings had disappeared, with the exception of the concrete-built ones."

"When we got out of the railway station we noticed that all the sign posts were white and all the black figures had been eaten away."

"Walking along we saw bottles all welded together by the heat, and then we saw cycles all welded together. That was something."

"We went up one of the concrete buildings close to where the bomb had exploded. All of the doors and windows were gone even the steps, which were concrete, were all bubbled."

He will argue that the bombing was essential, claiming: "There was no other way of saving lives and ending the war.

"Later on a trip to Hiroshima I asked a survivor of the bomb whether he thought it was a good idea. He said it was a brilliant idea because it saved a lot of Japanese lives, a lot of American lives, and a lot of British lives as well.

"Knowing the way the land was it would have been very difficult (to invade Japan) because it was mountainous, and there were lots of caves, and villages tucked away among the mountains. So it would have been a terrific job to invade and capture it without taking a lot of casualties."

*Hiroshima – 70 Years On, which will also feature an interview with an American physicist involved in the development of the bomb, will be broadcast at 10am on Thursday on BBC Radio 5 live.