Able Day atom bomb test. Correspondents aboard an LCU (Landing Craft Utility) view the badly damaged USS Independence (CVL-22), two days after the aerial burst atom bomb test that took place on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands on 1 July 1946 (local time). This test, codenamed 'Able Day', used a Mark 3 nuclear bomb called 'Gilda'. The explosion was part of a series of tests code-named 'Operation Crossroads'. The yield was thousands of tons of TNT, with a column of water vapour reaching thousands of metres into the air. The aerial Able blast was followed by the underwater Baker blast on 25 July 1946. Photographed on 3 July 1946.