The Manhattan Project in Colour: Rare Restored Footage Airs Tonight on Channel 4

The Manhattan Project in Colour is on Channel 4 tonight at 8pm.

Eighty years ago, the course of history changed forever when the United States detonated two atomic bombs—Little Boyover Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Fat Man over Nagasaki three days later. These unprecedented weapons were the product of the top-secret Manhattan Project, led by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose life and moral struggle were recently brought to vivid prominence in Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed film Oppenheimer. The project, a vast wartime collaboration of scientists, engineers, and military personnel across multiple sites, not only ended World War II but also ushered in the nuclear age, reshaping global politics, science, and warfare.

Thousands of black-and-white photographs and hundreds of reels of film—many taken in secrecy—document the intense and often perilous years of the Manhattan Project, from clandestine lab work to the Trinity Test in the New Mexico desert. This unique documentary painstakingly restores and repairs these rare images, including priceless damaged footage, allowing audiences to witness the monumental events and human stories behind the creation of the world’s first nuclear weapons in unprecedented clarity.

Watch or stream on Channel 4.