MV

Motor ship

A motor ship or motor vessel is a ship propelled by an internal combustion engine, usually a diesel engine. The name of motor ships are often prefixed with MS, M/S, MV or M/V.- See also :...

 Rapana was one of nine Anglo Saxon Royal Dutch/Shell

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

 oil tankers converted to become a Merchant Aircraft Carrier

Merchant aircraft carrier

Merchant aircraft carriers were bulk cargo ships with minimal aircraft handling facilities, used during World War II by Britain and the Netherlands as an interim measure to supplement British and United States-built escort carriers in providing an anti-submarine function for convoys...

 (MAC ship). The group is collectively known as the Rapana class.

Rapana was launched in March 1935 at Wilton-Fijenoord

Wilton-Fijenoord

Wilton-Fijenoord was a shipbuilding and repair company in Schiedam in the Netherlands from 1929 to 1999.The company has since been fully absorbed into Damen Shiprepair.-Ships built:* De Zeven Provinciën class cruiser:** HNLMS De Ruyter,...

, Schiedam

Schiedam

Schiedam is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. It is part of the Rotterdam metropolitan area. The city is located west of Rotterdam, east of Vlaardingen and south of Delft...

, Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 as an oil tanker and completed in April, 1935. She was converted to a MAC ship by Smiths Dock

Smiths Dock Company

Smiths Dock Company, Limited, often referred to simply as Smiths Dock, was a British shipbuilding company.-History:The company was originally established by Thomas Smith who bought William Rowe's shipyard at St. Peter's in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1810 and traded as William Smith & Co. The company...

, North Shields

North Shields

North Shields is a town on the north bank of the River Tyne, in the metropolitan borough of North Tyneside, in North East England...

, completing in July 1943.

As a MAC ship, she had no aircraft hangar, and continued to carry normal cargoes, although operating under Royal Navy control. Only her air crew and the necessary maintenance staff were naval personnel. Amongst the aircraft that served on Rapana was Fairey Swordfish Mk II

Fairey Swordfish

The Fairey Swordfish was a torpedo bomber built by the Fairey Aviation Company and used by the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy during the Second World War...

 LS326. The aircraft was later transferred to . As of November 2010, it is airworthy with the Royal Navy Historic Flight

Royal Navy Historic Flight

right|350px|thumb|Hawker Sea Fury FB.11 VR930 with wings folded, at Kemble Airfield, Gloucestershire, England.The Royal Navy Historic Flight maintains and flies a small number of aircraft that are important to British Naval aviation. The organisation is not part of the military establishment; it...

.

After the war, MV Rapana was reconverted and returned to merchant service as an oil tanker and served in that role until scrapped in Osaka

Osaka

is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

in 1958. She was renamed Rotula in 1950.