article_snippet.sent: USS Independence was scuttled in January 1951 during weapons testing near California's Farallon Islands.
article_snippet.sent: the Independence was seriously damaged by Japanese torpedo planes during the Battle of Tarawa in late 1943.
article_snippet.sent: Later, in the Battle of Cape Engano, planes from the Independence were involved in the sinking of four Japanese aircraft carriers.
article_snippet.sent: After the war, Independence became part of a fleet used to measure the effects of atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on July 1, 1946.
article_snippet.sent: The ship sat just 560 yards from ground zero in the first test, a 23-kiloton air blast of a fission bomb similar to the one used over Nagasaki, Japan, a year earlier, according to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.
article_snippet.sent: Twenty-four days later, Independence was 1,390 yards from the center of a second atomic blast -- also a 23-kiloton device but an underwater detonation.
highlights_snippet.sent: USS Independence was sunk in 1951 after weapons tests .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: Carrier was close-in guinea pig to two atomic bomb tests .
  