Roma (ship, 1926)
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 The Aquila in June 1951 in La Spezia
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The Roma was a 1926 posed in service Transatlantic - passenger ship of the Italian shipping company Navigazione Generale Italiana , which for the passenger and mail traffic from Italy to New York was built. In 1932 the Roma were transferred to the new state shipping company Società Italia Flotte Riuniti. During the Second World War it was converted into an aircraft carrier under the name Aquila , but the conversion was not completed. Launched in La Spezia in 1945 , the ship was finally scrapped in 1952.
The passenger ship
The steam turbine ship Roma was built for the renowned Italian shipping company Navigazione Generale Italiana, based in Genoa . She and her sister ship , the finished end of 1927 Augustus (32,650 GRT), created at the shipyard Giovanni Ansaldo & Co. , Sestri Ponente (Genoa). The first of the two ships was the Roma on February 26, 1926 . Their dimensions amounted to 32,583 gross registered tonnes (GRT), 21,015 tonnes below deck and 19,358 net registered tonnes (NRT).
The 215.06 meter long and 25.24 meter wide ship had two masts and two funnels and was driven by eight steam turbines that worked on four propellers . The cruising speed was 20 and the top speed 22 knots . The coal was burned in nine double-ended and four single-ended boilers with a total of 66 fireplaces. The ship had four steel decks and above that a teak- clad weather deck. The safety standards included a double floor and twelve watertight doors. The Roma was also equipped with a radio station , electric lights and cooling devices.
Like the Augustus , which was launched on December 13, 1926, the Roma had four price categories: 375 passengers in the first, 300 in the second, 300 in the intermedia class (roughly middle class ) and 700 in the third Class - a total of 1675 passengers - are carried. Both ships were very luxurious. The Baroque style prevailed on board the Roma , which earned them the name “floating Italian palace”.
On September 21, 1926, the Roma in Genoa embarked on their maiden voyage via Naples to New York . In November 1931 she made her last crossing on this route for the Navigazione Generale Italiana. In the following year the largest Italian shipping companies - the Navigazione Generale Italiana (head office in Genoa), the Cosulich Società Triestina di Navigazione ( Cosulich Line ; head office in Trieste ) and the Lloyd Sabaudo (head office in Turin ) - were nationalized by Benito Mussolini and Società Italia Flotte Riuniti summarized. The fleets of these shipping companies were therefore merged and the Roma were integrated into this new company. On January 15, 1932, she left for her first voyage for the new owners on her usual route.
In April 1933 there were modernizations in which the passenger capacities were changed. From then on there was first, second, tourist and third class. From February to April 1935 the Roma completed two crossings from Trieste to New York under the charter of the Cosulich Line, after which they returned to the Genoa – New York route. On April 29, 1940, she set out on a one-off trip from Trieste via Venice to New York and back to Genoa.
Conversion to the aircraft carrier Aquila
When Italy entered World War II in 1940, it quickly became clear that land planes could not protect the Italian naval forces at sea because of their long approach and departure from the fleet. Until then, the Italian government had assumed that, due to Italy's central location in the Mediterranean, which allows land aircraft to fly far over the Mediterranean from its coasts, no aircraft carriers were required. In fact, only aircraft carriers accompanying the fleet could take on this task. Therefore, in 1941, the Roma and Augustus began to be converted into aircraft carriers. Since the Italians had no experience in building and operating aircraft carriers, they sought technical support from the German sea testing center . Italy also bought the aircraft carrier systems in Germany - such as the aircraft carrier systems of aircraft carrier B - for the Roma, now known as Aquila ( Italian for "eagle") .
The conversion of the passenger ship Roma into an aircraft carrier was a complete conversion . Even the Roma propulsion system was expanded and replaced by propulsion systems for cruisers . This enabled the speed of the ship to be increased from 21 to 30 knots. The range at a speed of 18 kn would have been 5,500 nautical miles. Concrete-filled beads were added to the hull on both sides at the level of the waterline in order to solve the stability problems caused by the total renovation, and the resistance of the ship to torpedo and mine hits was increased considerably. In the hull, the transverse and longitudinal ship subdivisions have been improved for ship stability. The aircraft carrier was given a flight deck measuring 211.6 meters by 25.2 meters and a large hall for accommodating around 50 aircraft, of which around 15 were to be hung under the hall ceiling for reasons of space.
The installation and construction of the aircraft technology was progressing well, and at the time of the armistice on September 8, 1943, the aircraft carrier was nearing completion. The German troops marching in after the Italian armistice in Genoa - the reconstruction site of the Aquila - also took over the carrier, but the German navy had no use for an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, and so the ship remained unfinished in the port.
Whereabouts
On April 19, 1945, the Aquila was sunk by Italian combat swimmers fighting on the Allied side in the port of Genoa, so that the Germans could not sink the ship in the port entrance as a block ship and so Genoa would fail as a supply port for the Allies after the city was taken.
The consideration of completing the carrier after the war was not put into practice. The Aquila was only lifted in 1952 and scrapped .
Web links
- Short description of the ship in The Ships List (lower half)
- Further technical details ( Memento from August 17, 2000 in the Internet Archive ) (upper third)
- A picture and some facts about the ship
Footnotes
- ^ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching, no year, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 , page 547.