the south-west. Clio began to make smoke, firing at searchlights and gun flashes and De Recco tried to make a torpedo attack. At 00:55 Quiberon broke formation to attack Clio, was bracketed by return fire. Sirius and Argonaut were firing on Puccini and at 00:58, Argonaut fired a torpedo at Puccini then one to port soon after at Aventino which was on fire. At 01:12 Sirius also launched a torpedo at Aventino which exploded and sank. At 01:16 Quiberon sailed through water full of survivors and attacked Puccini and at 01:12 Quentin followed Quiberon, both destroyers setting Puccini on fire; Aurora was engaging Aspromonte from which began to sink; the British cruisers changed target to Clio but after five minutes Clio escaped without damage. De Recco had got within of Force Q by 01:30 and launched torpedoes which missed; shell hits from Sirius, Quiberon and Quentin killed 118 members of the crew and left De Recco stopped in the water, eventually to be towed to port by Pigafetta. The British ships completed their circuit around the Italian ships and set course for Bône. Force Q was attacked by torpedo bombers at 06:30 on 3 December, sinking Quentin with one torpedo and damaging Quiberon. Aftermath Analysis In 1966 the British official historians wrote that Force Q has a "spectacular success"; in an hour, Force Q had sunk of shipping during a "one-sided engagement" for no damage. Just after dawn, as Force Q was on the return journey to Bône, Quentin was sunk by a torpedo bomber. In 2009, Vincent O'Hara wrote that the battle was a serious Italian defeat, in which a large escort force had failed to prevent the four supply ships from being sunk. The minor damage inflicted by the Italian ships on their opponents stood in stark contrast, despite the convoy escorts managing launch so many torpedoes at such close range. The convoy had been attacked while disorganised and could not achieve a co-ordinated reply. After more than two years of war, the was still incapable of accurately aiming torpedoes at night, partly because accepted claims of torpedo hits uncritically, which obscured the significance of the failing. Casualties Of the four freighters of Convoy H, three were sunk and one scuttled; the escort Folgore was also sunk. Two hundred members of the merchant and crews and 1,527 troops, embarked on Aventino and Puccini were killed. The crew of