FlagshipThe cruiser HMAS Australia II and the Pacific War on Japan In 1924, the grand old battle cruiser HMAS Australia I was sunk off Sydney Heads. Once she had been the pride of the navy and the nation. She had saved Australia from an attack by a German squadron in the Pacific in World War I. But after the war she was obsolete, and a victim in the race to disarm after WWI. It was a day of national mourning when they blew the bottom out of her; she went to