Fighters from the convoy’s carriers attacked the Axis bombers that were defended by their own fighters, as antiaircraft guns from the warships and armed freighters pounded the blue sky.

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In the first attack, Kentucky shot down a bomber with the Oerlikon 20mm antiaircraft guns on the bridge. In the second attack a torpedo bomber came in at two hundred feet, half a mile off the port beam. “I saw three splashes in the water,” said Roberts. “I thought at first that they were bombs, but suddenly realized that they were torpedoes, as I could faintly see the wakes approaching the convoy. I immediately altered course hard to starboard and managed to avoid them. HMS Liverpool and the Dutch merchant vessel Tanimbar were both struck by these torpedoes.”

The aviation fuel and ammunition on the Tanimbar immediately blew. “I saw lifeboats, people and debris hurtling up­wards,” said a sailor watching from another ship. “Flames shot hundreds of feet in the air. The hull of the vessel separated amidships, and within no time she had disappeared from sight, leaving only a few smoldering relics.”

She sank in seven minutes, leaving thirty men dead.

The second torpedo blew a huge hole in the new cruiser Liverpool, and she was towed back to Gibraltar. Volunteers were given an extra tot of rum for retrieving the bodies of the twelve men who had been steamed in the engine room.

The convoy reached the Sicilian Narrows at dusk. As planned, the battleship, both carriers, three of the four cruisers, and seven destroyers turned back to Gibraltar. The carriers were too vulnerable in the channel because they had no room to maneuver or run, and the other warships were needed to escort them.

Kentucky and the four other freighters were left with HMS Cairo, an aging cruiser with four-inch antiaircraft guns, plus nine destroyers, four minesweepers, and six motor launches, good for rescuing survivors of blown-up merchantmen.

Italian reconnaissance planes dropped parachute flares that torched the moonless night with a surreal glow, trying to locate the convoy for Italian and German submarines. But the flares missed by miles, as the ships steamed at twelve knots, zigzagging to keep the target moving. By daybreak, they had made it through the Narrows.

As the sun rose on the faces of the sailors on deck of the Kentucky, shells from six-inch guns started flying at her bow. Adm. Angelo da Zara had raced overnight from Palermo on the north side of Sicily with two Italian light cruisers and five destroyers to stand between the convoy and Malta.

Capt. C. C. Hardy, commanding Operation Harpoon on the Cairo, sent his five largest destroyers ahead to fight off the Italian warships, leaving the merchantmen protected by just Cairo and four small 1,050-ton destroyers. Cairo pumped out a thick smoke screen, and Hardy told the masters to run for Vichy French territorial waters along the African coast.

Led by the 1,850-ton Bedouin, the five fleet destroyers raced toward the enemy, between splashes from the screaming six-inch shells. Bedouin took twelve hits, which blew the mast away and knocked out the engines, electrical systems, and fire systems. She was towed away by another destroyer and later sunk by a torpedo bomber that killed twenty-eight of her crew.

“During this time Cairo was on a course roughly parallel to the enemy,” stated Captain Hardy in his vague and rambling report. Cairo was hit twice, with the first six-inch shell damaging the superstructure and the second one lodging inside an oil tank without exploding, partially flooding the engine room. She returned to the convoy, where Hardy found chaos.

Admiral Cunningham had been assigned by Churchill to represent the Admiralty in Washington, primarily to deal with the difficult American admiral King. Adm. Henry Harwood replaced Cunningham as Mediterranean commander-in-chief, but distinctly lacked his predecessor’s fighting spirit.

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