Italian battleship Impero

Impero at her launching on 15 November 1939
History
Italy
Name:	Impero
Namesake:	Italian Empire
Laid down:	14 May 1938
Launched:	15 November 1939
Fate:	Scrapped 1948–1950, in Venice
General characteristics
Class and type:	Littorio-class battleship
Displacement:	Full load: 45,485 long tons (46,215 t)
Length:	240.7 m (790 ft)
Beam:	32.9 m (108 ft)
Draft:	9.6 m (31 ft)
Installed power:	8 × Yarrow boilers 128,000 shp (95,000 kW)
Propulsion:	4 × steam turbines, 4 × shafts
Speed:	30 kn (56 km/h; 35 mph)
Complement:	(planned) 1,920
Armament:	3 × 3 381 mm (15.0 in)/50 cal guns 4 × 3 152 mm (6.0 in)/55 cal guns 4 × 1 120 mm (4.7 in)/40 guns for illumination 12 × 1 90 mm (3.5 in)/50 anti-aircraft guns 20 × 37 mm (1.5 in)/54 guns (8 × 2; 4 × 1) 10 × 2 20 mm (0.79 in)/65 guns
Armor:	Main belt: 350 mm (14 in) Deck: 162 mm (6.4 in) Turrets: 350 mm Conning tower: 260 mm (10 in)
Aircraft carried:	3 aircraft (IMAM Ro.43 or Reggiane Re.2000)
Aviation facilities:	1 stern catapult

Impero was the fourth Littorio-class battleship built for Italy's Regia Marina (Royal Navy) during the Second World War. She was named after the Italian word for "empire," in this case referring to the newly (1936) conquered Italian Empire in East Africa (Somaliland, Eritrea and Ethiopia territories) as a result of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. She was constructed under the order of the 1938 Naval Expansion Program, along with her sister ship Roma.

Impero was laid down in May 1938 and launched in November 1939. The entrance of Italy into World War II forced the Regia Marina to refocus its construction priorities on escort warships, so Impero was left incomplete. After Italy surrendered to the Allies on 8 September 1943, the rest of the Italian Navy steamed to Sardinia to rendezvous with their American contemporaries. Still incomplete in Trieste, Impero was captured by the Germans, who used the hulk for target practice. Sunk by Allied bombers in February 1945, she was refloated in 1947 and scrapped in Venice from 1948 to 1950.

The Italian leader Benito Mussolini did not authorize any large naval rearmament until 1933. Once he did, two old battleships of the Conte di Cavour class were sent to be modernized in the same year, and Vittorio Veneto and Littorio were laid down in 1934. In May 1935, the Italian Naval Ministry began preparing for a five-year naval building program that would include four battleships, three aircraft carriers, four cruisers, fifty-four submarines, and forty smaller ships. In December 1935, Admiral Domenico Cavagnari proposed to Mussolini that, among other things, two more battleships of the Littorio class be built to attempt to counter a possible Franco-British alliance—if the two countries combined forces, they would easily outnumber the Italian fleet. Mussolini postponed his decision, but later authorized planning for the two ships in January 1937 for the 1938 Naval Expansion Program. In December, they were approved and money was appropriated for them; they were named Roma and Impero.