World of Warships - First Look: Tier VIII Premium Italian Aircraft Carrier Aquila

[@waynelawrence5220]

It was not laid down as a carrier, the hull is a converted ocean liner built in the 1920s (SS Roma) so that is probably why it has a low torpedo protection number.

[@SeaRaptor]

Good info, I didn't know this!

[@SgtBeltfed]

Yea, very heavily rebuilt, but the torpedo protection and weird armor are a product of her conversion.

[@comradeossinin1152]

Sir Raptor! Aquila here was born the SS Roma, a transatlantic passenger liner in 1926. This origin of her hull also explains the absolute paper armour and lack of meaningful torpedo protection. Interestingly enough, during her conversion, she received the engines of several Capitani-Romani class cruisers and almost tripled her shaft horsepower, leading to a fairly decent projected top speed, as seen in game. She would finally be mothballed following the nation's surrender in September of 1943. She was finally scrapped in 1952, after having stood in harbour for all that time.

[@comradeossinin1152]

P.S. The deck does not extend, I checked on GM3D, she'll be slaughtered by German bombers. Also, the torpedoes have a 400 meter arming distance, so they might be godawful slow, but you can drop them so close you'll see the fear on the AA gunners' faces

[@valerioborghese2916]

Italy was building 2 aircraft carriers during WWII, the Aquila and the Sparviero, both were transatlantic passenger liners converted to aircraft carriers. Unfortunately they never saw action because the Aquila was bombed by the Allies when it was almost completed and Sparviero still uncompleted was sunk by the Germans to block the Port of Genoa from an allied landing.

[@emanueleenricovairani492]

@@valerioborghese2916 there were also plans to convert impero, the fourth ship of the littorio/vittorio veneto class into an aircraft carrier, but they never reached production. The only "aircraft carrier" we had was the Giuseppe Miraglia, which was a seaplane tender ship.

[@nicholasd.6515]

I'm led to believe some of these lower stats have to do with the fact she was originally an ocean liner converted into an aircraft carrier. Also, I just discovered your channel and subbed. You seem like a chill, honest and friendly dude.

[@SeaRaptor]

Thanks for the kind words! Some other commenters have educated me about the original nature of Aquila's hull, which explains where some of the deficiencies come from. Unfortunately, it's still up to the players to have to cope with them!

[@albertorepetto2909]

A little correction about the name: in Italian you have to say the "u" of Aquila loud and clear, and the stress/longer vowel is on the first "a" instead of the "i". I often hear this wrong pronunciation: "Aqiila" While the correct pronunciation is instead: "AAquila"

[@parapat9957]

the regia marina was the first navy to at least in project have missile ships, not only that but the first project with a missile mount was from the 1930-1935 and the ship in question was an aircraft carrier

[@parapat9957]

also since it has only 2 types of planes I hope she will get some kind of special gimmick

[@parapat9957]

hopefully when the thech tree comes out they will have smoke generators like the rest of the italian ships since it doesn't have armor or aa

[@therepublic21]

@@parapat9957 the gimmick she gets is atrocious 3.7km AA

[@parapat9957]

@@therepublic21 I am Italian so this Is maybe Biasi but why they Need to do them dirtuy like that

[@therepublic21]

@@parapat9957 because WG hates and despises the Axis Nations of WWII. Have given them terrible gimmicks or line traits in the past.

[@mihaitha]

The 80mm strip on top of the citadel looks to extend under that 19mm extension above it. When you hovered the red plate, the aft portion was highlighted as well, meaning it's all one single piece.

[@SeaRaptor]

Yup, agreed. I don't think it's enough to shrug off AP bombs, but it's something?

[@albertorepetto2909]

The torpedo protection on the Aquila was indeed weird and unique, but also very interesting, and, in a way, ingenious considering the resources available. Basically the Italians added to the Roma hull bulkheads filled with concrete. Yup, concrete. While the effectiveness of such a system could only be speculated, I kinda agree that it would be hardly amazing. What pisses me off is that the 135mm guns are (again!) not dual purpose as they should be.

[@valkyriedown5465]

As a CV player, she has me quite interested, Indomitable is one of the most high skill floor carriers in the game, so seeing another CV with a 2 squadron only gimmick will be interesting. Also looking forward to her sister ship in the tech tree.

[@Chaser617]

I was actually kind’a interested in what they would do with Aquila’s air group since if I remember right she was originally suppose to use the navalized Stukas that were designed for Graf Zep originally, that as well as the historic hostility between the Regia Aeronautica and the Regia Marina and how the RA insisted on full command of any aircraft assigned to RM ships even scouts so the ship captains were not in actual direct line of command for their scout pilots.

[@gonzalomartinezria5682]

That's actually wrong. Italy developed a navalized version of the Re.2001 for Aquila's flight group. Even the German engineers that helped in her development admitted it was a way better plane for carrier use than the Stuka.

[@Chaser617]

@@gonzalomartinezria5682 good to know. Most the sources I had pointed to the stupa varient. However findingnenglish language sources for the Regia Marina is difficult at times

[@Frank_2023]

What no SAP Rockets?, lmao. Thanks Raptor another great breakdown video :)

[@weabootrash5891]

Real talk though. would SAP rockets even be any good? You'd have neither the pen to citadel many cruisers, nor the fire chance of HE

[@johnperez6069]

Finally... We see everything being set up for the creation of the Guido Butai....

[@KingRat71]

It looks like it has a very tiny torpedo blister added to the crusie ship hull that it has.

[@SeaRaptor]

It DOES look a little like it was added during construction, doesn't it? Kind of like you see on some of the modernized Japanese BBs.

[@unclelou8636]

Not sure how much that possibly hidden 80mm plate is going to matter, since there is citadel volume above it with only 19mm plate. You can absolutely citadel Aquila without ever touching that 80mm plate, if it even exists in there.

[@dclark142002]

For all you folks wanting a good starting point to learn about Aquila... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_aircraft_carrier_Aquila Also, you should check out the other two Italian aircraft carriers from this timeline.... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_aircraft_carrier_Sparviero en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_seaplane_carrier_Giuseppe_Miraglia

[@awesomeness1941]

Hey SeaRaptor do we know if the pen of the AP rockets will be similar to the German CV's?

[@SeaRaptor]

Good question. Based on the numbers we were given at the start of testing, Aquila's pen on her AP rockets is 122mm. Parseval, for comparison, pens 184mm. So at present, the Italian pen is roughly 2/3 that of her German counterpart. Subject to change during testing, of course.

[@panchoamd]

Remember that Aquila is a former Ocean Liner. She does not have a citadel in the "military" sense. WG did a great job "emulating" that weird arrangement. What you see as a citadel, is the boilers/engine rooms, with ammo and fuel compartments cobbled togheter in a haphazard way. There is no much room for improvements there. Obviously, as a ocean liner, speed was paramount, and as a carrier too. So, she has a very poor armor in order to improve speed and handling.

[@realhuman4396]

Really interesting ship design here. You can see many relations to Graf Zeppelin (gee, I wonder why)

[@martinnebola9586]

Great. I am enthusiastic after long time. I will buy it is CV. Reason - this ship exist! I not buy any ship in WOWS if the ship not exist in history!

[@themrkaramelka]

mb her torpedo protection is so bad because of histori. Because she rebuilt from transatlantic liner Roma

[@dclark142002]

The biggest risk to Aquila is from Russian CV rocket planes...not torpedo planes. Plus, Aquila's own rocket planes could probably easily murder her if she gets hit broadside.

[@SeaRaptor]

Reasonable. I suspect Enterprise's rocket planes would also make a right royal hash of her given what I do to Shokaku with those things.

[@joshuabonk3360]

Why can't I see any Lat's Plays on KZbin.

[@SeaRaptor]

Not sure I follow the question.

[@DVDFGlenCo]

Just need USS Robin to be added now

[@ExSpoonman]

400 meter torp activation renders 30 knots negligible. I can't believe you missed that.

[@SeaRaptor]

I don't normally get that down into the weeds on paper evaluations because they're very difficult to judge without actually playing the ship (or having more CV experience than I do presently). The time/distance compression of the game makes a lot of such evaluation impossible without seeing it in practice.

[@michaelkarkut5066]

Just what the game needed more cv’s

[@SeaRaptor]

Gotta make all those AA skills worth taking, comrade.

[@danieldeak9141]

So. It will be useless against dds. The ap rockets will only overpen them, dealing fuckall damage, and the torps are slow as shit too. Shame, since its so unique being an italian cv

[@SeaRaptor]

It will, yes. Remember that CVs of all nations are basically toothless against destroyers now, and WG has been on a long string of releasing CVs that don't even have tools to do anything but spot them.

[@scottfarley3644]

Those planes look like the Macchi C202 Folgore. Very underestimated Fighter.

[@andre0000000007]

prounouned ah-quill-a as in quill to write with (y)

[@Moon_Cricket_Stinks]

Ngl I'm looking forward to the support carriers. Theres already too many fleet attack cvs.

[@danielefabbro822]

Of course we was working on that technology. Apart from the fact that we had cospicuos contracts to develop carriers for foreign navies, we also tried multiple times to explore this tecnology since we had already mastered aerial warfare (actually, this last was one of out major contribution to war science since the first aerial war action was made by us). Unfortunately, fascist regime, as always, planned to peacefully take a mojito one the beach, watching our ships being sinked by the Royal Navy and then drink all that fake reports admiral Iachino wrote to excuse his own ineptitude and lack of skills. You know? Those jokes about dispersion, accuracy, quality of the shells, all fake stories made by him and then taken as facts by the Allies... By the way, we was up to the task for many other fields of warfare technology at the time, just... the fascists literally have done nothing, used nothing, made no progress at all. For example, we had our version of the radar... also because we contributed a lot in the field of the radio waves, we even invented the Radio. We was quite advanced in nuclear energy technology. Our major scientist flee Italy because his wife was jewish... so, thanks Italians for this gift, we had to finish our Manhattan Project here... By the way, from 2025 we will also build our first nuclear aircraft carrier so... are we the third nation of the world to be able to build a nuclear aircraft carrier? I mean, after the US and France. Soviets tried but end up making that walking-joke called Admiral Kuznetov, right? Oh, our planes, at the time of our surrender in 1943 we had some of the best fighter planes ever made. Notice the Macchi MC202 or the MC 205 for example, even better was the Veltro MC 206 that was even more faster than the vast majority of every other existent plane around. Of course WG have seen the blueprints of our ship, have noticed her strong points and have suddenly decided to turn them all into weak points arguning something while they was busy cleaning the head of their boss of parassites and other insects.

[@seanelucero]

like the italians ever had a CV. LOL. and we dont' need more CVs in the game

[@albertorepetto2909]

Well, they did? Aquila was nearly completed by 1943, and even Sparviero was in construction. And while both of those didn't saw service, the Italian naval aviation sunk, badly damaged and disabled several Allied ships during the war. (Interesting fact: by 1943 the British had lost in the Mediterranean roughly the same amount of ship tonnage as the Italians). Italian planes in this game have more rights to be around in Wows than Soviet or Netherlanders. On the other hand, I understand the gameplay problem of having more CVs, but that's another talk - the entire AA and CVs should be reworked.