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This ship took atomic blasts and survived!
More detail here.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/17/us/sunken-navy-carrier-revealed/index.html

.....atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific on July 1, 1946. It 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. 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.

Actually the Independence was a CVL, a light carrier as opposed to a CVE or escort carrier. The Independence class consisted of 9 ships I believe, I’m working from memory here, and they were built on cruiser hulls. They could keep up with the big fleet carriers but they carried about half the air group of a fleet carrier, maybe 36-42 birds. The CVEs could only operate maybe 12-16 aircraft.

22 posted on 04/17/2015 9:21:40 PM PDT by Crapgame (What should be taught in our schools? American Exceptionalism, not cultural Marxism...)