Cheshire and William Penney were official British observers of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. His vantage point was in the support B-29 Big Stink. He did not witness the event as close up as anticipated due to aircraft commander James Hopkins' failure to link up with the other B-29s. Hopkins was meant to join with the others over Yakushima but he circled at instead of the agreed height of . He tried to justify this by the need to keep the VIP passengers out of danger but Cheshire thought that Hopkins was "overwrought".