HMAS Adelaide (FFG 01) was the lead ship of the of guided missile frigates built for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), based on the United States Navy's s. She was built in the United States and commissioned into the RAN in 1980. During her career, Adelaide was part of Australian responses or contributions to the 1987 Fijian coups d'état, the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, the Indonesian riots of May 1998, the INTERFET peacekeeping taskforce, the War in Afghanistan, and the United States-led invasion of Iraq. In 1997, the frigate rescued two competitors in the 1996–97 Vendée Globe solo, round-the-world yacht race. In 2001, a boat carrying suspected illegal immigrants was intercepted by Adelaide; the events of this interception became the centre of the Children overboard affair. In 2008, Adelaide was the second ship of the class to be decommissioned, in order to offset the cost of an upgrade to the other four vessels. This ship was to be sunk off Avoca Beach, New South Wales as a dive wreck on 27 March 2010, until an appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal by protest groups led to a postponement of the scuttling until additional cleanup work was completed. Despite further attempts to delay or cancel the scuttling, Adelaide was sunk off Avoca on 13 April 2011. Design and construction Following the cancellation of the Australian light destroyer project in 1973, the British Type 42 destroyer and the American were identified as alternatives to replace the cancelled light destroyers and the s. Although the Oliver Hazard Perry class was still at the design stage, the difficulty of fitting the Type 42 with the SM-1 missile, and the success of the acquisition (a derivative of the American ) compared to equivalent British designs led the Australian government to approve the purchase of two US-built Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates (including Adelaide) in 1976. A third was ordered in 1977, followed by a fourth, with all four ships integrated into the USN's shipbuilding program. A further two ships were ordered in 1980, and were constructed in Australia. As designed, the ship had a full load displacement of 3,605 tons, a length overall of , a beam of , and a draught of . Early in the ship's career, she was modified from the Oliver Hazard Perry Flight I design to Flight III, requiring a lengthening of the helicopter deck for the RAST helicopter recovery system,