The starting point for this “what if” needs to be examined in more detail.
The history of the Soviet claim on the Italian fleet starts with an initial 7 Oct 1943 demand for one third of the Italian fleet. By 27 Oct 1943 Molotov advised Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, that this “demand” was for 1 battleship (they were really after a Littorio), 1 cruiser, 8 destroyers, 4 submarines and 40,000 tons of merchant shipping.
The principle of the whole Soviet claim was controversial enough in Anglo American circles but at the end of the day was met to keep Stalin on side.
But the need to placate Stalin was countered by the need to keep the Italians onside for the rest of the War. So initially the Soviet claim was met via the loan of the battleship HMS Royal Sovereign, cruiser USS Milwaukee, 9 old 4 pipe RN destroyers, 3 U & 1 S class RN subs. Merchant tonnage was also transferred by both Britain & the US.
The Italian Fleet issue saw Churchill & Roosevelt doing everything they could to accommodate a fundamentally unreasonable, ungrateful and suspicious Stalin.
winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu
The 1947 peace treaty awarded $100m to the USSR which was partly settled by the transfer of Italian warships. But those vessels transferred effectively related back to what had been demanded in 1943 and agreed in 1944. All that was then left to do was swap the loan ships for the Italian ships. Postwar, sorting all this out took until 1950!
So the question really is, are the Soviets sufficiently Naval air minded in Oct 1943 to “demand” Aquila, if she survived, as part of that one third or not? If they were then it seems likely that Britain & the US would have acquiesced, as they did with everything else on that Soviet wish list. But initially it would have been settled by transferring an RN or USN ship. Given the age of the other vessels transferred and the timing we might have been looking at Argus which had been laid up in the Reserve Fleet in Dec 1943 and was in use as an accommodation ship. Come 1947 she would have been swapped for Aquila.
But would the Soviets have asked for Aquila in 1943? A carrier is useless without an air group. So the Soviets would have also had to request carrier aircraft via Lend Lease, a request that may or may not have been met (not every request was). Then they would have to train a whole organisation from scratch, in the middle of a war. Or request help from Britain and/or the US again via Lend Lease. So it was not just as simple as demanding a ship.
And what use would a carrier have been to the Soviets in WW2? Soviet Naval Aviation was shore based. And from there was able to control the seas that needed controlled - Arctic Ocean, Black Sea and eventually the Baltic.
On balance I find the whole idea of a 1943/44 demand highly unlikely. That,for me, then rules out a 1947 acquisition as part of the peace treaty.
But, for the moment let’s consider what the Soviets would learn from acquiring Aquila in 1947?
Technically there was little to learn, other than perhaps how not to build a carrier.
In May 1945 they had captured the badly wrecked Graf Zeppelin, sunk in shallow waters at Stettin. In Aug/Sept 1945 they had raised her from the bottom. Although assigned as Category C by the Tripartite Naval Commission in 1945 (ships to be scrapped or otherwise destroyed) it was 17 Aug 1947 before she was towed out into the Baltic to be sunk where she was found in 2006. That was plenty of time to study her in detail. She was only sunk after the Soviets used her for weapons trials to test the effectiveness of their weapons against carriers, a type of ship they had never had to encounter previously.
Aquila was converted after much consultation with the Germans in 1941/42. So she used the same catapults and arrester gear as Graf Zeppelin. German launch procedures, although never tested, were time consuming and cumbersome. The German contribution also resulted in Italian design modifications to the lifts, hangar, electrical ring main and fire control system.
And if they get the ship where does the air group come from? By mid-1947 east-west relations are going downhill. Without that the Soviets are years away from generating a Naval Aviation capability.
If Aquila did survive to enter Allied hands, I think the very most that could be expected would be to do as little work as possible to her to allow her use as an aircraft transport. A similar approach as taken with the French Bearn. By the end of 1943 the US had lost interest in modernising the French ships and AFAIK never touched an Italian one. Maybe the Italians could do the work at Taranto as they did for other Allied warships.
As for subsequent post-war use, and with Italy ruled out by the peace treaty, then France is the most likely candidate to acquire her, if indeed she survives the gas axe. So she would serve alongside Dixmude (ex Biter) and Arromanches (ex Colossus). But I really don’t see her surviving into the 1960s with the French having laid down Clemenceau & Foch 1955-57.
As for Impero, according to Bagnasco & de Toro, she had been partially stripped of materials useful to the German war effort in 1944. At the end of April 1945 she was sunk in shallow water in Trieste harbour by 3 large explosive charges placed along her length. In July 1946 she was raised just sufficiently to allow her to be towed to the Bay of Muggia where she was again left to settle on the bottom. This was to clear Trieste harbour for merchant shipping and to prevent the Yugoslavs, who had staked a claim on her, from attempting to capture her. She was stricken from the Italian naval register on 27 March 1947.
There were then concerns about what would happen to her, as politically the situation concerning Trieste was not settled. So in Aug/Sept 1947 following British Admiralty pressure she was raised again and towed to Venice where she was again settled on the bottom and moored to stop her drifting in the current. She was again raised in early 1949 to make the short trip to the breakers yard.
I very much doubt that there was anything about her in 1947 that would have made reconstruction as a carrier in any way worth while economically.
