The name "Duisburg Convoy" refers to the largest ship. Force K of the Royal Navy , based at Malta, annihilated the convoy, sinking all the merchant ships and the destroyer Fulmine with no loss and almost no damage. 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 the defection of France removed the French Navy from the Mediterranean on 25 June The island of Malta in the central Mediterranean was a base of operations for the British. In Africa, supplies had to be carried huge distances by road or in small consignments by coaster. Loaded Axis ships sailing to Africa accounted for 90 percent of the losses and Malta-based squadrons were responsible for about 75 percent 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 open. 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 radar and prepared only for night attacks by aircraft.
Force K Captain William Agnew consisted of two light cruisers with six 6-inch guns in twin turrets each and two treble inch torpedo tubes. Two destroyers from Force H with four twin 4-inch guns each and two quadruple inch torpedo tubes, joined Force K at Malta. Intended to fight at night, all of the ships were equipped with radar and the cruisers had new searchlights with better performance. A British reconnaissance aircraft was dispatched to "find" the convoy as camouflage.
Agnew was under instructions to attack the nearest escorts first and then fire on the convoy, dealing with the other escorts as they appeared. As the ships closed with the convoy, radar detected more ships, assumed to be destroyers and escorts but actually the distant escort scorta a distanza. Force K sent an attack signal at a. Aiming by radar, the British opened fire at about a. Grecale was hit by the first three salvoes from Aurora ; Lance and the 4-inch secondary armament of Aurora bombarded a merchant ship.
