Author(s): Malcolm McConnell

Fiction

14 August 1945. As Japan's Emperor Hirohito recorded his message of surrender, rebel troops commanded by elite officers from the War Ministry burst into the imperial palace. Their intention was to stage a coup, destroy the recording and issue forged orders for Japan to continue the war. Had they succeeded there would have been massive kamikaze attacks on allied forces, possibly provoking America to drop a third atomic bomb... But on that fateful night, in the skies approaching Tokyo, a stream of B-29B 'Superfortress' bombers were heading towards Japan's last functioning oil refinery. Fearing they could be carrying another atom bomb, Japanese air defences ordered a total blackout of the city and the imperial palace. In the hours of chaos that followed, the rebels were foiled and soldiers loyal to the emperor wrested back control. At midday on 15 August 1945, the imperial message of surrender was broadcast. The war was finally over. The result of more than twenty years research by Jim Smith, who took part in that final, fateful air raid, The Last Mission is a gripping work of speculative investigation into one of the least known yet profoundly significant episodes of the Second World War.