The battleship was laid down the keel in August 1925. The HMAS Australia, from the Kent-Class, was a grand cruiser which was 192 m long and just less than 21 m wide and was built in Great Britain. At the end of the 20’s she serviced the Royal Australian Navy. Off the coast of Dakar the Australia had one of her first military missions in 1940. In the process the battleship bombed a French destroyer so severely that it ran aground. One year later the HMAS Australia was, among other things, used as an escort for convoys in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Thereafter several battles in the Pacific followed.
On October 21, 1944 the “Aussie”, as she was named by the sailors, experienced a day which the crew members at that time will probably never have forgotten. A Japanese Kamikaze armed with a 200 kg bomb shot toward the Australia and crashed into the command bridge. Although many sailors lost their lives, among them also the commander, most of the over 800 crew members were lucky that the heavy bomb did not explode. The ship with a displacement of 10 tons would probably have been destroyed.
After the war the HMAS Australia served as a training ship and was scrapped in 1956.