On the night of 11 November 1940, the British incapacitated or destroyed half of the Italian fleet's battleships in a daring aerial assault as they lay at rest at Taranto.

[2][3] The Italians' success in disrupting the reinforcement of Malta cast serious doubt upon British plans to send a further convoy to supply the island (Operation Collar).

At 09:45 on 27 November, an IMAM Ro.43 reconnaissance floatplane from the heavy cruiser Bolzano discovered a British squadron steaming to the east, 17 nmi (31 km; 20 mi) north of Chetaïbi.

[5][6] Shortly after, at 9:56, Admiral James Somerville received the report of his own aircraft from the carrier HMS Ark Royal about the presence of five cruisers and five destroyers, and assumed that these were Italian units closing for battle.

[7] The two forces were fairly even; although the Italian ships possessed both longer-ranged and larger guns, the British had an aircraft carrier, which had shown several advantages over the battleship at Taranto.

Rapid fire between the two forces continued as the distance between them closed, but as the range shortened Italian firepower began to put pressure on the outgunned British.

Four minutes later, Vice Admiral Angelo Iachino, commander of the Italian cruiser group, received orders to disengage, although the battle had swung slightly in their favour.

The heavy cruiser HMS Berwick was hit at 12:22 by a single 203 mm (8 in) shell, which knocked out her "Y" turret, killed seven men, wounded nine others and ignited a fire that took an hour to subdue.

As Iachino remarked, "the use of these ships, which constituted at that moment nearly all of our fleet's effective units after the blow at Taranto, was decided by Supermarina mainly for reasons of morale, and to demonstrate that our combative spirit remained intact.