Force K of the Royal Navy , based at Malta, was sent to attack the convoy based on information gleaned from decrypts of Axis signals coded on the Enigma machine , covered by the fortuitous flight of a reconnaissance aircraft.
The convoy was annihilated and the destroyer Fulmine was sunk, with no loss and almost no damage to Force K. Italian attempts to reduce the risk of interception by British forces, by sending individual ships, pairs and smaller convoys from several ports at once was futile, because the British were reading Italian naval codes; the next convoy was forced to return to port.
The British had held the eastern end of the Mediterranean and France the western end but on 25 June the fall of France ended the participation of the French Navy Marine Nationale in the Allied domination of the Mediterranean. The Italian Army invaded Greece the following October.
Once in Africa, Axis supplies had to be carried huge distances by road or in small consignments on coastal trading vessels , the distance from Tripoli to Benghazi being about mi 1, km. Loaded Axis ships sailing to Africa accounted for 90 per cent of the losses and the Malta-based squadrons were responsible for about 75 per cent of ships sunk by aircraft. Italian air reconnaissance discovered the ships on 21 October and cancelled sailings for Tripoli, leaving only the inferior facilities at Benghazi to receive convoys.
The convoy was routed to the east of Malta, since the airfields in Libya were under Axis occupation, rather than the usual west and along the Tunisian coast. Brivonesi and Supermarina were under the impression that the British ships would not be able to attack because they overlooked the fact that British ships were equipped with radar and prepared only for night attacks by aircraft.
