[1] The United States Army Air Forces officer, who was both a combat cameraman and a specialist in assessing the effective of bomb damage, made the films in September 1945.

The evidence that McGovern collected from Japan was shown to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the team which created the weapons.

[5] Shortly after the United States entered World War Two, McGovern became cameraman-photographer for President Franklin Roosevelt.

[3] He flew as a photographer on B-17 bombing missions over Europe; his footage was incorporated into the 1944 hit documentary Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress.

[2] After the war, McGovern was assigned to Lookout Mountain Air Force Station, a secret underground photo lab and studio in Hollywood hills.

[3][5] In September 1945 Lt. Col McGovern became the first American to start documenting the destruction caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[7][2] In December 1996, he appeared on television episode dedicated to exposing the Alien Autopsy footage as a fake.