<p>The heavy bombers kept up a relentless attack against ports and airfields, reducing docks and loading cranes to tangled steel and iron, and cratering the runways and flattening airport buildings. On 10 April, a force of 24 B-17s found and sank the Italian heavy cruiser <hi format=ital>Trieste</hi>. It was anchored in a cove at La Maddalena, Sardinia, protected from torpedo attack by an anti-submarine net, but had no protection from bombs dropping from 19,000 ft (5,791 m). The ship was hit, burned and sank.
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<p>The heavy bombers were in a type of war that gave no indication of the very real problems they would have later in Europe. The B-17 defenses were not yet fully probed and countered by the German fighters that attacked them on the few occasions when the Luftwaffe intercepted a raid. During the entire North African campaign, only 24 B-17s were lost in combat, and only eight of these were charged to Italian or German fighters. The rest were accounted for by flak or 'other causes'.
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<p>Rommel retreated westward for almost three months, moving his battered force over more than 1,700 miles (2,735 km). Near the end, he and his staff were ordered home; his men were faced by both British and Americans, and were penned on Cap Bon peninsula just across the straits from Sicily and freedom.
