the change till 3:25, when she also reversed course, but remained much behind the two cruisers. The reasons for Toscano's decision of reverse course have never been fully explained: it has been suggested that, upon realizing that he had been spotted by aircraft, he decided to turn back like on 9 December (but in this case, a course towards the Aegadian islands would have made more sense, instead that the northwesterly course ordered by Toscano; and the change was suddenly ordered more than 30 minutes after the cruisers had been spotted); that he wanted to mislead the reconnaissance plane about his real course, wait for it to go away, and then go back on the previous course to Tripoli; that he thought from the noise that torpedo bombers were coming, and he wanted to get in more open waters (farther away from the shore and the Italian minefields) to obtain more freedom of manoeuvre; or that he had spotted the Allied destroyers astern and, not wanting to present his stern to them (as the aft turrets were unusable and most fuel was stowed there), he decided to reverse course to fire on them with his bow turrets (upon ordering the change of course, he also ordered the gunners to keep ready). Stokes's destroyers were, indeed, just off Cape Bon by then, and they had spotted the Italian ships. Arriving from astern, under the cover of darkness and using radar, the British ships sailed close inshore and surprised the Italians who were further out to sea, by launching torpedoes from short range. The course reversal accelerated the approach between the two groups, and the Allied destroyers attacked together; Sikh fired her guns and four torpedoes against Da Barbiano (the distance was less than 1,000 meters) and Legion did the same, while Maori and Isaac Sweers attacked Di Giussano. Toscano ordered full speed and to open fire (and also, to Di Giussano, to increase speed to 30 knots) and Da Barbiano also started a turn to port (on orders from the ship's commanding officer, Captain Giorgio Rodocanacchi), but at 3:22, before her guns were able to fire (only some machine guns managed to), the cruiser was hit by a torpedo below the forwardmost turret, which caused her to list to port. Da Barbiano was then raked with machine gun fire, which killed or wounded many men and set fire to the fuel