On this day in 1944, a Japanese plane deliberately flew into an Australian warship off the Philippines, killing dozens of men including her captain. It was a horrifying glimpse of a terrible new weapon about to be unleashed, the suicide attack. This is the ordeal of HMAS Australia. By October 1944 Japan was losing the war and running out of ships, planes, and trained pilots. As the Americans and their allies closed in on the Philippines in the vast operation that became the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Japanese grew increasingly desperate. HMAS Australia, a heavy cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy, was there in the thick of it, part of the enormous allied fleet supporting the invasion of Leyte. On the morning of October 21, a Japanese aircraft came at the Australia. Instead of dropping its bomb and flying away, the plane bore in and smashed directly into the cruiser, striking her upper works in a deliberate crash that tore through the ship and sprayed burning fuel and wreckage across her decks. The blow was devastating. Around thirty of her crew were killed or later died of their wounds, among them her commanding officer, Captain Emile Dechaineux, who was mortally hurt. Many more were wounded. The battered Australia had to withdraw from the battle and sail away for lengthy repairs. Historians still argue about exactly how to classify that attack, whether it was truly the first of its kind or an individual pilot's desperate act just days before the practice became official. Because within days, the Japanese would formally unleash the Kamikaze, the Divine Wind, organized units of pilots deliberately crashing bomb laden aircraft into allied ships, trading their lives to inflict damage no ordinary attack could. In the battles around Leyte, the kamikazes began in earnest, and they would torment the allied fleets for the rest of the war, sinking and damaging ship after ship and killing thousands of sailors. What happened to HMAS Australia on this day in 1944 was a grim herald of that nightmare to come, one of the earliest times allied sailors watched an enemy pilot choose to turn his own aircraft into a guided weapon and die to kill them. The Australia survived, was repaired, and incredibly went on to be struck by kamikazes again and again in later battles, becoming one of the most suicide attacked ships of the war, her long agony beginning here, off the Philippines, on this day in 1944.

The best Italian ship class of WW2 was the Littorio-class battleship. Fast, beautiful, and among the most powerful battleships in the world. And their story ends with one of them becoming the first warship ever sunk by a guided bomb. In the 1930s, Mussolini wanted a navy that could rule the Mediterranean, the sea he liked to call "Mare Nostrum." Our Sea. The naval treaties of the time capped new battleships at 35,000 tons. Italy officially followed the rules. In reality, the Littorios came out well over 40,000 tons. What Italy got for cheating was impressive. Nine 15-inch guns in three triple turrets, among the longest-range naval guns of the war. A top speed of 30 knots, as fast as many cruisers. A clever underwater protection system built around a hollow cylinder along each side of the hull, designed to absorb torpedo blasts. And sleek, elegant lines. A lot of people still consider them the best-looking battleships ever built. Three were completed: Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, and Roma. On paper, they were better than most of the battleships the British had in the Mediterranean. In practice, they spent the war fighting against problems that had nothing to do with design. Italy had no aircraft carriers. Its ships had no radar until late in the war. And above all, Italy was always desperately short of fuel. Every sortie burned oil the country barely had. Then came the punches. November 1940. Taranto. British Swordfish biplanes from the carrier Illustrious attacked the Italian fleet at anchor at night. Littorio took three torpedoes and settled to the bottom of the harbor. She was raised, repaired, and back in service within months. March 1941. Cape Matapan. Vittorio Veneto was hit by an aerial torpedo that left her dead in the water with thousands of tons of seawater pouring in. Her crew got her moving again, and she escaped. Three Italian heavy cruisers that stayed behind to help another ship were caught that night by British battleships and destroyed. In 1942, Littorio fought at the Second Battle of Sirte against British cruisers and destroyers guarding a convoy to Malta. In 1943, American bombers caught the battleships in port and hit them again. They survived again. Tough ships. A navy that rarely had the fuel to use them. Then September 1943. Italy surrendered to the Allies. The fleet was ordered to sail to Malta and hand itself over. On September 9, the three battleships sailed out together. The Germans, furious at Italy's betrayal, sent bombers after them. Those bombers carried something new: the Fritz X, a radio-controlled armor-piercing bomb that the bomb aimer could steer onto its target. Roma was hit twice. The second bomb set off one of her forward magazines. A massive explosion tore the ship apart. She broke in two and sank. Around 1,400 men were killed, including the fleet commander, Admiral Carlo Bergamini. Roma became the first warship ever sunk by a precision-guided weapon. The future of naval warfare arrived in a single afternoon. The two surviving battleships reached Malta and surrendered. Littorio, by then renamed Italia, and Vittorio Veneto sat at anchor under the guns of the island they had been built to help conquer. After the war, both were scrapped. Roma's wreck sat lost on the bottom for nearly 70 years, until it was finally found in 2012 off Sardinia, about 3,000 feet down. The finest ships Italy ever built, undone not by enemy battleships, but by empty fuel tanks, enemy aircraft, and a bomb from their former ally.