Newly declassified pictures show USS Independence as it was blown up alongside 77 other ships as part of atomic tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946

Stunning new pictures from a 1946 atomic weapon test on a hundred US ships have been revealed. The newly declassified images show the World War II veteran aircraft carrier USS Independence, which was one of nearly a hundred ships used as targets in the first tests of the atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946. The two Bikini tests known as Operation Crossroads were carried out in the immediate aftermath of the atomic end to World War II in Japan, and signaled a new era in world history, the historians involved in the new study say. The newly declassified images show the World War II aircraft carrier which was one of nearly a hundred ships used as targets in the first tests of the atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Here, Sailors watch the'Able Test' burst miles out to sea from the deck of the support ship USS Fall River on 1 July 1946.