The Unbreakable Aussie_ HMAS Australia (D84) , The Warship That Survived 6 Kamikaze Hits (720p60fps)

What happens when a warship becomes the number one target for the most terrifying new weapon of the war? For the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Australia, it meant facing hell and sailing right through it. This wasn't just a ship of steel and guns. It was a vessel that carried the pride of a nation, and it would be tested by fire in a way few others ever were. Her story is one of endurance, sacrifice, and a stubborn refusal to die, even when the sky itself seemed to be falling. Some warships are called lucky. Others are called unlucky. But the HMAS Australia was something else entirely. She was a survivor. In the aftermath of the First World War, the great naval powers tried to put a lid on the spiraling cost of building massive fleets. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 set strict limits on the size and number of capital ships, but it left a fascinating loophole for a new type of vessel. The treaty cruiser. These ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement and armed with main guns no larger than eight inches in caliber. For nations like Great Britain and its dominions, these powerful long-range cruisers were the perfect solution for policing a vast global empire. Australia, eager to modernize its fledgling Royal Australian Navy, or RAN, ordered two of these new county-class heavy cruisers to be built in the United Kingdom. One of them, laid down at the John Brown and Company shipyards in Clydebank, Scotland, was destined for legend. She was christened HMAS Australia, the second ship to bear the name, and when she was commissioned on April 24, 1928, she was one of the most powerful warships in the Southern Hemisphere. With a sleek, imposing silhouette dominated by three massive funnels, Australia was a symbol of national pride. She displaced over 13,000 tons at full load, could slice through the waves at nearly 32 knots, and her main armament of eight 8-inch guns could hurl a 256-pound, 116-kilogram shell over 17 miles, 28 kilometers. She was designed for reach and power, and she spent the next decade showing the Australian flag across the globe, serving as the proud flagship of the RAN. It was a peaceful time of parades and diplomacy, but the storm clouds of another global conflict were gathering, and Australia's holiday cruise was about to come to an abrupt end. When World War II erupted in September 1939, HMAS Australia was far from home. She was immediately put to work in the freezing, dangerous waters of the North Atlantic. Her mission was vital. Hunting for German surface raiders and U-boats that were preying on the Allied convoys, the lifelines that kept Britain in the fight. For months, she patrolled the treacherous Denmark Strait and the waters off West Africa, searching for ghosts like the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. It was grueling, unglamorous work, a world away from the sunny patrols of her peacetime service. Her first real taste of combat, however, would come from an unexpected direction. In September 1940, Australia was assigned to Operation Menace, a complex and ultimately doomed British-led mission to install Free French forces under Charles de Gaulle in the strategic port of Dakar in French West Africa, which was then loyal to the collaborationist Vichy regime. The Allies hoped the garrison would switch sides without a fight. They hoped wrong. As the Allied fleet approached Dakar on September 23rd, they were met not with welcoming banners, but with stubborn resistance from French shore batteries and warships. Over the next two days, Australia found herself in the bizarre and tragic position of trading fire with her former Allies. She engaged French destroyers and cruisers, scoring hits but also taking them. During a duel with the French cruiser Georges Legge and the destroyer L'Odysseau, Australia was straddled by shell fire. Later, she was struck twice by six-inch shells from the shore batteries. While the damage was relatively minor, it was a brutal introduction to the realities of naval combat and a bitter taste of the complexities of the war. The entire operation was a failure, and the Allied fleet withdrew, leaving Australia with her first battle scars and a crew that was now blooded. After a quick repair in Liverpool, she returned to the lonely patrols of the Atlantic, but the focus of the war was about to shift dramatically. On December 7th, 1941, the Empire of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and the war in the Pacific exploded. For Australia, the fight was now at her own doorstep. The nation faced the terrifying prospect of invasion, and every asset was desperately needed for home defense. HMAS Australia was immediately recalled. She would spend the rest of the war in the Pacific, where she would earn her legendary reputation. Her initial duties were escorting convoys between Australia and the United States, a critical task to build up Allied forces in the region. She then joined the newly formed Allied Naval Task Forces, operating primarily with the United States Navy. In May 1942, she was part of the screening force for the American aircraft carriers during the pivotal Battle of the Coral Sea. This was the first naval battle in history where the opposing fleets never saw each other, fought entirely by aircraft. While Australia didn't fire her main guns at enemy ships, her anti-aircraft crews were in constant action, helping to defend the carriers Lexington and Yorktown from waves of Japanese bombers and torpedo planes. The battle was a strategic victory for the Allies, halting the Japanese seaborne invasion of Port Moresby in New Guinea. Three months later, she was thrown into one of the most brutal campaigns of the entire war, Guadalcanal. As part of the naval force supporting the U.S. Marine landings in August 1942, Australia provided naval gunfire support, her eight-inch guns pounding Japanese positions on the island. She was present during the disastrous Battle of Savo Island on August 9, where a surprise Japanese night attack resulted in the sinking of four Allied cruisers, including her sister ship, HMAS Canberra. Australia, having been detached to guard the transport ships, narrowly avoided the main slaughter. The loss of her sister ship was a devastating blow to the RAN, and it underscored the ferocity of the fight in the Pacific. For the next two years, Australia would serve tirelessly in the island-hopping campaigns, providing fire support, screening carriers, and proving herself a reliable and powerful workhorse of the Allied fleet. But her greatest test, her trial by fire, was yet to come. By October 1944, the tide of the war had turned decisively against Japan. American forces were poised to retake the Philippines, a move that would sever Japan's lifeline to its oil-rich conquests in the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese knew that if the Philippines fell, the war was lost. They decided to gamble everything on one final decisive naval battle, the Battle of Lake Gulf. It would be the largest naval battle in history, and it would see the birth of a terrifying and desperate new tactic. HMAS Australia, along with her compatriot HMAS Shropshire, was part of the massive Allied fleet supporting the landings at late. She was assigned to Bombardment and Fire Support Group 77.3 under Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf. On October 20th, her guns were once again roaring, pounding Japanese shore positions. The next morning, October 21st, the ship was on patrol at the entrance to Lake Gulf. The sky was filled with Allied aircraft, but the Japanese were still fighting back with ferocious intensity. Just after six in the morning, the ship's radar picked up an approaching enemy aircraft. It was a Japanese plane, flying low and fast. As it closed in, it was hit by the ship's anti-aircraft fire and began to trail smoke. But it didn't turn away. Instead, it straightened its course, aiming directly for Australia's bridge. This was something new, something chillingly deliberate. On the bridge, Captain Emile Deschenu and Commodore John Collins, the Australian squadron commander, watched in horror as the plane, a bomb clearly visible beneath its fuselage, bore down on them. At the last second, the plane banked slightly and slammed into the superstructure above the bridge. The impact itself was devastating, but the explosion of the plane's fuel tanks and its 440-pound, 200-kilogram bomb unleashed a torrent of fire and shrapnel. The bridge and forward control stations were wrecked. The blast tore through the compass platform, killing Captain Deschenu almost instantly and mortally wounding Commodore Collins. In a matter of seconds, the ship's command structure had been decapitated. Thirty men were killed or died of their wounds in the attack, including the ship's captain, and another 64 were wounded. There is still some historical debate about this moment. Was it a truly deliberate, pre-planned suicide attack, or simply a badly damaged pilot choosing to crash his plane into a target of opportunity? While isolated instances of pilots crashing into ships had occurred before, the attack on HMAS Australia on October 21st is widely regarded by historians as the first successful organized kamikaze attack of the war. Just three days later, the first official Special Attack Corps missions would be launched, making the name kamikaze, or Divine Wind, a synonym for terror in the Allied fleets. For the crew of HMAS Australia, the distinction was academic. They had been the first to feel the full, horrifying force of this new fanaticism. Despite the chaos and the loss of her captain, the crew's training took over. Fires were brought under control, and the battered cruiser remained on station, her guns still firing. The ship was eventually forced to withdraw to the rear base at Espiritu Santo for repairs. Her crew buried their captain at sea and patched up their vessel as best they could. They had faced the Divine Wind and survived, but their ordeal was far from over. After just a few weeks of temporary repairs, and with a new commanding officer, Captain John Armstrong, Australia was ordered back into the fight. The next objective was Lingayen Gulf, on the main Philippine island of Luzon. And it was here that HMAS Australia would sail into the heart of a kamikaze storm. On January 5, 1945, as the Allied fleets steamed towards Lingayen Gulf, the sky darkened with Japanese aircraft. The kamikazes came in waves, diving through a storm of anti-aircraft fire. Just after 5.30 in the afternoon, a twin-engine Ki-46 Dyna reconnaissance plane, modified to carry a bomb, broke through the defensive screen and hurtled towards Australia. Despite being hit repeatedly, it crashed into the ship's starboard side amid ships above the upper deck. The explosion and resulting fire caused heavy casualties, killing 25 men and wounding 30 more. The crew, already veterans of one kamikaze strike, fought the fires with grim determination. They cleared the wreckage, tended to their wounded, and kept the ship in the fight. They didn't have to wait long for the next attack. The very next day, January 6, as the pre-invasion bombardment of Luzon began, the kamikazes returned. This time, it was an Aichi D-3A Val dive bomber. It dove straight for the battered cruiser, smashing into the same side as the previous day's hit, just a few feet away. The bomb it carried detonated, ripping through the deck and starting another intense fire. This third hit killed 14 men and wounded 26. The ship was now a wreck amid ships. Her superstructure blackened and twisted. Any other vessel might have been withdrawn, but Australia was needed. Her 8-inch guns were a vital part of the bombardment force. So, her exhausted crew cleaned up the new carnage, and she stayed on the firing line. The ship seemed to be a magnet for suicide attackers. They bypassed other ships, including aircraft carriers, to get to the big Australian cruiser. Perhaps it was her size and her three distinctive funnels that made her an attractive target. Or perhaps it was just a terrible coincidence. Whatever the reason, her trial by fire continued. On January 8, the kamikazes found her again. This time, they came in pairs. The first aircraft struck the top of the forward funnel, spraying burning fuel everywhere, but causing relatively light structural damage. Just minutes later, a second kamikaze slammed into the ship, hitting near one of the 4-inch gun mounts, causing more damage and casualties. This was the fourth and fifth time the ship had been deliberately crashed into. The cumulative damage was immense, and the psychological toll on the crew was unimaginable. Every time the alarm sounded, they knew that planes were not just trying to drop bombs, but were actively trying to turn themselves into human-guided missiles aimed directly at them. The final blow came the next day, on January 9. As Australia was retiring from the bombardment area, a sixth Japanese aircraft made a successful suicide run. It crashed into the upper deck, and its bomb exploded deep within the ship. This final hit, while less visually spectacular than the others, caused significant internal damage and more casualties. The ship had absorbed an incredible amount of punishment. More than almost any other Allied warship would endure from this type of attack and survive. But she had finally reached her limit. With her superstructure a mangled ruin, her decks littered with wreckage, and having suffered a total of 86 killed and 171 wounded from the kamikaze attacks, HMS Australia was finally ordered to withdraw. She had been hit six times in less than three months. She had survived, but she was crippled. The unbreakable ship was broken. She limped back to the forward bases, and then began the long, slow voyage across the Pacific to the United States for the massive repairs she so desperately needed. She spent the rest of the war in a dry dock. By the time she was finally battle-ready again, Japan had surrendered. The ship that had been at the forefront of the Pacific War, the ship that had faced down the kamikaze menace like no other, would miss the final victory celebrations. HMS Australia returned home in 1946, her scars a testament to the price of that victory. Her fighting days were over. She spent her final years in a much quieter role, serving as a training ship for the next generation of Australian sailors. She was a living museum, a floating memorial to the brutal realities of the Pacific War. Finally, in 1954, after 26 years of service, the old warrior was paid off. Two years later, she was towed to the shipbreakers in Barrow-in-Furness in the UK, not far from where she was born. The story of HMAS Australia is more than just the story of a ship. It's the story of the men who sailed her. They were the ones who fought the fires, tended the wounded, and kept the guns firing while the sky fell around them. They earned her a place in history as one of the toughest, most resilient warships of World War II. She wasn't sent by shells at Dakar or by the inferno of late Gulf. It took six direct hits from one of the most terrifying weapons ever conceived to finally knock her out of the fight, and even then, she refused to go down. She was a symbol of her nation's grit and determination, a ship that truly earned the name she carried, Australia. The legacy of HMAS Australia reminds us that sometimes, victory isn't about how much punishment you can deal out, but about how much you can take and keep moving forward. What do you think is the most incredible part of this ship's story of survival? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. And if you're fascinated by the tales of these legendary machines and the people who crewed them, make sure you hit that subscribe button. We're always on the hunt for new targets, so if there's a particular warbird, warship, or battle legend you think is crying out for a deep dive, drop your mission briefing for us below. Your suggestion could become our next episode.