Vittorio Veneto (C550)
 Vittorio Veneto in 2001
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The Vittorio Veneto (C550) was a flight deck cruiser that was the flagship of the Italian Marina Militare from 1969 until the light aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi was commissioned in 1985 . This ship, built by Navalmeccanica in Castellammare di Stabia near Naples , was specially designed for submarine hunting and command tasks. The planned sister ship Italia was not built for financial reasons. The Vittorio Veneto was decommissioned in 2006. It is currently in the Taranto Naval Arsenal .
history
The Vittorio Veneto was a further development of the Andrea Doria class . Because of the 48-meter-long and 18.5-meter-wide aft flight deck with a hangar underneath, the ship was also referred to as a helicopter carrier, although it has no continuous flight deck. It could either use six larger SH-3D Sea King helicopters or nine smaller AB 212 helicopters or a mix of both models. Modernization work on the ship took place between 1980 and 1983.
The second Italian warship after the battleship RN Vittorio Veneto , which was put into service in 1940 and named after the Battle of Vittorio Veneto in late October 1918 , received its naval war flag donated by the city of Vittorio Veneto in Trieste on November 4, 1969 . From April to August 1970 it undertook a training voyage in the Atlantic and visited various North American and European ports. After the decommissioning of the cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi , the Vittorio Veneto became the new flagship of the fleet in 1971 . As such, she completed a training voyage to South America from August to October 1972 with two frigates of the Bergamini class . At the beginning of 1973 the Vittorio Veneto provided humanitarian aid with other Italian ships and helicopters after a flood disaster in Tunisia . Similar missions took place after earthquakes in Friuli 1976 and in Irpinia in 1980. In the summer of 1979, the Vittorio Veneto operated together with the cruiser Andrea Doria and the supplier Stromboli as part of the 8º Gruppo navale in the South China Sea , where they rescued almost 1,000 so-called boat people . In 1984 she supported an Italian contingent of troops in Beirut . In 1985 she shadowed the hijacked cruise ship Achille Lauro and in this context served as a platform for the preparation of a planned deployment of special forces . Several maneuvers followed, also against the backdrop of the Libya crisis in 1986.
After she had given up the role of the flagship, the Vittorio Veneto led a task force (24º Gruppo navale) as part of the Unified Task Force to Somalia in late 1992 and early 1993 . From April to September 1993 she then led the NATO task force STANAVFORMED in Operation Maritime Guard in the Adriatic . In 1997 she led the task force 28º Gruppo navale off the coast of Albania during Operation Alba , where she ran aground off Vlora on April 22, but was then towed free.
In her last years of service, the Vittorio Veneto was also used as a training ship for prospective Portepee NCOs. In 2003 it retired from active service and was assigned to the reserve. The official decommissioning took place on June 29, 2006 in Taranto. Since then there have been various attempts to turn the Vittorio Veneto into a museum ship . Since the Navy, as the owner, has high requirements for such a use, but these could not be met by various interested parties, the Vittorio Veneto remains in the Mar Piccolo of Taranto in an increasingly poor condition.
The successor to the flight deck cruiser Vittorio Veneto was the aircraft carrier Cavour in 2009 .
