As MS Augustus MS
Augustus and her sistership, were a group combined
ocean liner and
cruise ship built in 1927 for
Navigazione Generale Italiana. She was launched in December 1926 at the Ansaldo Shipyard and was christened by
Edda Mussolini (daughter of dictator
Benito Mussolini). The ship was later transferred to the new
Italian Line after the merger of Navigazione Generale Italiana. When Italy joined the war in 1940, she and her sister ship
Roma ceased all passenger services and were laid up. The
Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina) then began the process to convert them both to aircraft carriers, which would begin with their seizure in 1941.
As Sparviero In 1936, a project to transform the 30,418 GRT ocean liner
Augustus into an auxiliary carrier was prepared. The idea was initially abandoned but then resumed in 1942. The passenger ship
Augustus was first renamed
Falco in 1942 and then changed to
Sparviero in the same year. The project resumed the one developed by the Colonel of the Naval Engineers Luigi Gagnotto and the transformation works began in September 1942 in the Ansaldo Shipyards in
Genoa. The
superstructure was to be removed. She would have also been equipped with a single
hangar with two lifts and fitted with a
flight deck that ended before the
bow. The main armament would have been placed at the sides of the forecastle at the level of the hangar deck, and at the stern and there was no island structure because the exhaust gases of the diesel engines would have been expelled laterally below the level of the flight deck. She would have had a narrow flight deck. Her air group was to be either 34
fighters or 16 fighters and 9
torpedo bombers. The propulsion plant was to remain unchanged, the diesel engines giving an estimated speed of 20 knots. The
Sparviero was going to have an armament of six 152 mm guns and four of 102, as well as several anti-aircraft machine gun positions. The conversion began in September 1942, the work undertaken by the
Ansaldo Shipyard in
Genoa. Apart from removing the superstructure little else was done before the Italian capitulation in September 1943. The hull was captured shortly after by the neoestablished
National Republican Navy of the
Italian Social Republic, a German puppet state. She was later taken over by the occupying German troops and was sunk on 5 October 1944 to block access to the port of Genoa. The wreckage was recovered after the war and finally scrapped in 1951. Like
Sparviero, the , a modification of the
sister ship of
Augustus, , was
scuttled and
scrapped before the conversion into the aircraft carrier was finished. These two ships were the last attempts to build aircraft carriers for the Italian Navy until 1981, when work began on . ==See also==