In June 1945, Downs joined a group of airborne correspondents organized by Tex McCrary to cover the Twentieth Air Force. The group included journalists Bill Lawrence, George Silk, Homer Bigart, and others. They toured Europe in the weeks after V-E Day in a custom B-17 fitted with high-powered shortwave radio equipment. They started with Paris and moved on to examine first-hand the destruction from the Allied bombing campaigns on Hamburg and Dresden. The group then made stops in Cairo, Baghdad, and Sri Lanka before reaching East Asia in August to cover the final days of the Pacific Theatre. Downs reported from Manchuria during the Soviet invasion. He arrived in Manila in August 1945 and landed with the initial occupying units of Japan, later being present for the signing of the Japanese surrender. Over the following several months the group toured Asia, making stops in China, French Indochina, Thailand, Burma, the Malay States, and Java. The group entered Hiroshima on September 4, nearly a month after the atomic bombing.