Beli Orao was a royal yacht built for the Yugoslav Royal Navy in 1938–1939. She was captured in April 1941 by the Italians during the World War II invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. Re-armed, she saw service as a gunboat in the Italian Royal Navy, briefly as Alba then Zagabria, undertaking harbour protection and coastal escort duties. She was then used to train anti-submarine warfare specialists. After the Italian armistice with the Allies in September 1943, she was handed back to the Yugoslav navy-in-exile on 7 December. Refitted, and under her original name, she became a tender for a flotilla of motor gunboats. In this role she operated out of Malta, off the western coast of Italy, and later off the Yugoslav coast. After the war she remained in Yugoslav hands under the names Biokovo then Jadranka, serving as a naval yacht, as a presidential yacht and as a dispatch boat. In 1978, she was still in service, but was scrapped soon after. (Full article...)