At the Malta Conference (30 January – 3 February 1945), it was decided to transfer air force and army units from Italy to the Western Front in France and Belgium in Operation Goldflake.

The flotilla rendezvoused for the return to Genoa and was about 20 nmi (23 mi; 37 km) north of Cape Corse, when they were detected by an Allied shore radar at Livorno.

Captain André Léon Jean Marie Morazzani, the senior officer aboard Tempête, ordered the British ships to intercept the intruders, while he led the older and slower French destroyers south-east, in case the Germans doubled back to intercept a convoy near Cape Corse.

Lookout let them go to concentrate on the crippled TA29 and circled it, firing continuously with its six 4.7-inch guns from as close as 2,000 yd (1 nmi; 1 mi; 2 km).

Meteor's commander, Richard Pankhurst, saw a "geyser of flame and metal" and TA24 sank just after 04:00, losing thirty men in 13 minutes.

The British destroyers ended any possibility of German deep water offensive operations in the Ligurian Sea, let alone anywhere else in the Mediterranean.

[1] In 2011, Spencer Tucker wrote that "the British destroyers achieved decisive results against a German unit... and their victory effectively ended the Kriegsmarine's ability to undertake deep water offensive operations".