During World War I, Viribus Unitis took part in the flight of the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben and light cruiser Breslau.

Viribus Unitis was sunk while at anchor by limpet mines emplaced by Italian sailors on 1 November 1918.

[3] Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria travelled aboard Viribus Unitis in late June 1914 en route to Bosnia to observe military manoeuvres.

On 25 June, he boarded the ship in Trieste Harbour and travelled to the mouth of the Neretva River, where he transferred to another vessel.

On 30 June, two days after Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, Viribus Unitis transported their bodies back to Trieste.

[5] Viribus Unitis, along with her sister ships Tegetthoff, Prinz Eugen and the remainder of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was mobilized on the eve of World War I to support the flight of SMS Goeben and Breslau.

The two German ships were stationed in the Mediterranean and were attempting to break out of the strait of Messina, which was surrounded by enemy troops and vessels and make their way to Turkey.

[8] By 1918, the new commander of the Austrian fleet, Konteradmiral Miklós Horthy, decided to conduct another attack on the Otranto Barrage to allow more German and Austro-Hungarian U-boats to safely get through the heavily defended strait.

During the night of 8 June, Horthy left the naval base of Pola with Viribus Unitis and Prinz Eugen.

On the contrary, the Italians did not even discover that the Austrian dreadnoughts had departed Pola until later on 10 June when aerial reconnaissance photos revealed that they were no longer there.

The Austrian government decided to give Viribus Unitis, along with much of the fleet, to the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs.

The transfer to the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs took place in the evening of 31 October, and Viribus Unitis was renamed Jugoslavija.

The explosion did not happen at 6:30 as predicted and Vuković returned to the ship with many sailors, mistakenly believing that the Italians had lied.

[17] Paolucci and Rossetti were interned until the end of the war a few days later, and were honoured by the Kingdom of Italy with the Gold Medal of Military Valor.

The reverse of the coin is a tribute to the old Austro-Hungarian Imperial Navy, showing SMS Viribus Unitis from a front angle.

The coin commemorates not only the ship Viribus Unitis, but also the three main arms of the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the First World War.