How HMAS Australia Survived Five Kamikaze Strikes in 4 Days and Kept Fighting

#HMASAustralia #LingayenGulf #Kamikaze At five thirty-five in the afternoon on the fifth of January, nineteen forty-five, a Japanese Aichi Val dive bomber slammed into the port side of His Majesty's Australian Ship Australia and killed twenty-five sailors in a single instant. Over the next ninety-six hours, she would be hit four more times. By the afternoon of the ninth of January, she would be the most repeatedly damaged Allied surface combatant of the entire Lingayen operation, and she would still be firing her eight-inch guns at the Japanese shore. This documentary reveals the four days that nearly destroyed His Majesty's Australian Ship Australia at Lingayen Gulf, how Captain John Armstrong refused to retire his ship even after losing more than half her four-inch anti-aircraft gun crews, and why a kamikaze pilot's bomb on the sixth of January was almost certainly a fifteen-inch British naval shell salvaged from Singapore and welded back onto an aircraft to be flown into an Allied warship. Discover the County-class heavy cruiser that absorbed punishment no other Allied ship in the gulf would survive, the gunner crews who stood at their open mounts while the Vals dived, and the moment a fifth kamikaze sheared off the forward funnel like a knife through soft cheese, only fifteen feet from killing the bridge. 🔥 In this video: Strike One, the fifth of January: How the first Val killed twenty-five officers and ratings at the port four-inch mounts. The Singapore Shell: The fifteen-inch British naval projectile that the Japanese salvaged, welded to a kamikaze, and dropped on the Australian starboard side. The Anti-Aircraft Crisis: Why Australia was down to one fully crewed four-inch mount per side after only two strikes. Captain Armstrong's Decision: Why he refused to retire and signalled the flag that his ship was operational after every single hit. Strike Five: The pilot who aimed for the bridge, missed by fifteen feet, and tore the top off the forward funnel instead. Sources of Where I get my facts: Gill, G. H. (1968) Royal Australian Navy, 1942–1945. Canberra: Australian War Memorial. Frame, T. (2004) No Pleasure Cruise: The Story of the Royal Australian Navy. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Morison, S. E. (1959) History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Volume XIII: The Liberation of the Philippines. Boston: Little, Brown. Cassells, V. (2000) The Capital Ships: Their Battles and Their Badges. Sydney: Simon and Schuster. Rielly, R. L. (2010) Kamikazes, Corsairs, and Picket Ships: Okinawa, 1945. Philadelphia: Casemate. Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes. #HMASAustralia #LingayenGulf #Kamikaze #RoyalAustralianNavy #PacificWar #WWIIHistory #HeavyCruiser #PhilippinesCampaign