Aquila (Italian for "Eagle") was an Italian aircraft carrier converted from the trans-Atlantic passenger liner . During World War II, Work on Aquila began in late 1941 at the Ansaldo shipyard in Genoa and continued for the next two years. With the signing of the Italian armistice on 8 September 1943, however, all work was halted and the vessel remained unfinished. Aquila was eventually scrapped in 1952. Genesis Aquila was Italy's first aircraft carrier project; it was not built from the keel up as such, and was never completed. Following World War I, the Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina) began exploring the use of ship-borne aircraft by converting the merchant ship Città di Messina into the twin-catapult-equipped seaplane tender Giuseppe Miraglia. Commissioned in 1927, the ship could carry as many as four large and 16 medium seaplanes and was primarily used as an experimental catapult ship for most of her career. By 1940, she was designated an aircraft transport/training ship and functioned as a seaplane tender for Italian capital ships. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Italian military and political circles vigorously debated the role and necessity of aircraft carriers in the expanding Italian fleet. Gino Ducci (Regia Marina chief of staff in the early 1920s), Romeo Bernotti (assistant chief of staff) and naval officer Giuseppe Fioravanzo all championed development of a fleet air arm, the building of aircraft carriers and consolidation of the air and naval academies. Other factions opposed these ideas, especially carrier construction, not so much on the grounds of military usefulness, but rather on cost and practicality. More than anything else, Italy's limited industrial capacity, inadequate shipyard space and lack of financial capital prevented her from building the kind of well-balanced fleet envisioned by her naval theorists. Priority went to those ships deemed most necessary in a future conflict. Since France was considered Italy's most likely foe in another European war, keeping parity with her navy became a paramount concern. Between 1932 and 1937, the French Navy laid down four new capital ships: (Dunkerque, Strasbourg, Richelieu, and Jean Bart). This caused dictator Benito Mussolini and the Italian admiralty to scrap any plans for carrier construction. Instead, Italy modernized two older battleships (Cavour and Cesare in 1933), and began construction of two new ones (Vittorio Veneto and Littorio in 1934). Because the Regia Marina was expected to operate primarily in the relatively narrow confines of the Mediterranean and