The atomic bomb cloud over Nagasaki, Japan was described in "The Times" of London of 13 August 1945 as a "huge mushroom of smoke and dust". On 9 September 1945, "The New York Times" published an eyewitness account of the Nagasaki bombing, written by William L. Laurence, the official newspaper correspondent of the Manhattan Project, who accompanied one of the three aircraft that made the bombing run. He wrote of the bomb producing a "pillar of purple fire", out of the top of which came "a giant mushroom that increased the height of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet".