HMAS Australia

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Built at Glasgow, Scotland by John Brown Shipbuilders on April 24, 1928, the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia was the fifth of the Kent-class cruisers the British built for the Australian Navy. She displaced 9,850 tons and about 10,900 tons fully loaded. With a maximum rated speed was 31.5 knots, her power plant had eight boilers and four steam turbines that generated 80,000 horsepower and drove four propellers. Her armament had eight 8-inch guns mounted in four dual turrets, four 4-inch single-mounted guns, four 3-pounders guns, four 2-pounder pompoms, and eight 21-inch torpedo tubes mounted in two quad-mounts. The cruiser’s crew complement numbered between 685-710 men.

For the first ten years of her existence, she served mostly in Australian home waters and occasionally went abroad. In 1938-1939, the Australian Navy upgraded her with added armor protection, a modified forward superstructure, an antiaircraft gun battery, modern gunfire control systems, and facilities to carry aircraft.

After World War II began in Europe in 1939, the Australia steamed in the Indian and south Atlantic oceans to protect the shipping routes to and from Australia from German surface raiders. She went to the north Atlantic in mid-1940 and was part of the Royal Navy’s attack on Dakar. During that battle, shells from the French cruisers Georges Leygues and Montcalm hit her. In 1942, she returned to Australia to recommence protecting shipping in the Indian Ocean.

When Australia went to war with Japan, the Australia was the flagship of a small task force in early 1942 assigned to protect the waters east of her home country. She was part of Allied task force at the Battle of the Coral Sea where attacking Japanese carrier aircraft put her antiaircraft guns to the test. Later in August, she was part of the fleet that invaded Guadalcanal and Tulagi and fought Mikawa’s cruisers and destroyers at the Battle of Savo Island.

Afterward, the cruiser was one of the heaviest ships in the fight for New Guinea. The Australia initially covered the landings at Cape Gloucester in the beginning of late 1943 as well as providing fire support and protection from the Imperial Japanese Navy’s surface ships. In June 8-9, she led a task force that chased Japanese destroyers off Biak.

The Australia was part of the great task force that invaded Leyte in October 1944 and landed the American Army in the Lingayen Gulf in January 1945. While supporting the Lingayen landings, at least five Japanese kamikaze planes struck her and killed more than 40 crewmen. Nonetheless, she stayed on station until the threat went away.

The cruiser had more modifications done to her in 1945-1946 when the Australian Navy removed one of her 8-turrets, installed more antiaircraft guns in its place, and added the latest modern equipment. She remained part of Australian fleet after World War II and spent her final years training Australian sailors. The Australian Navy paid off HMAS Australia’s crew for the last time in August 1954 and sold her for scrap in January 1955.