Action off Zuwarah

On 15 January 1943, the destroyers HMS Kelvin and HMS Nubian, blockading the port of Tripoli in Libya, had forced the torpedo boat Perseo to retire damaged and then sunk the 4,537 GRT D'Annunzio, a merchant ship trying to escape from Tripoli, on 15 January. On the night of 19/20 January, the British destroyers Kelvin and Javelin patrolled off Zuwarah, about 55 nmi (102 km; 63 mi) west of Tripoli, to cut off the escape of the last Italian ships from Tripoli.^[3]

The Type 271 radar on Javelin detected ships heading west towards the Tunisian coast, from the direction of Tripoli. The ships were the Tripoli minesweeping flotilla (Lieutenant Giuseppe Di Bartolo), which had been ordered to leave the city for Tunisia and then to Italy, to avoid capture. The flotilla was made up of four small minesweeping tugs (RD 31, RD 36, RD 37 and RD 39, of which RD 36 and 37 had Italian Guardia di Finanza crews; the naval trawler Scorfano, the largest ship in the convoy, the small tanker Irma; the auxiliary minesweepers DM 12 Guglielmo Marconi (a requisitioned brigantine); R 26 Angelo Musco and R 224 Cinzia (two former fishing vessels); the auxiliary patrol vessel V 66 Astrea (a motor sailing vessel) and the pump boat S. Barbara (towed by Scorfano).^[2]

Javelin and Kelvin moved to intercept the Italian ships, fired star shells to illuminate them and then mistook the vessels for an Italian convoy.^[2] The Italians were able neither to fight back (the RD minesweepers being armed with a 76 mm gun and two 6.5 mm machine-guns each, while the other ships carried only machine guns) nor to escape, being slower than the destroyers. RD 36, the flotilla leader, tried to cover the retreat of the other ships but was soon sunk with all hands. The other vessels, fleeing towards the coast to allow their crews to escape, were picked off one-by-one. RD 37 and Scorfano were sunk with no survivors; Marconi was set on fire but all of her crew escaped before she sank and Irma was finished off with a torpedo.^[4]