Dear Platon,

my sources are:

- Amiral Auphan (Sous-Sécretaire à la Marine at the time) & Jacques Mordal, "La Marine Française dans la seconde guerre mondiale", Editions France-Empire, Paris, 1967, page 240, note 1., who should know what they're talking about when they add "Ces transports furent arretés au premier torpillage";

- Alex Wassilieff (Contre-Amiral), "Un Pavillon sans Tache. De l'armistice au sabordage, la vérité", Bernard Grasset, Paris, 1986, page 209, note ***, who also writes "Les navires utilisés seront pour la plupart coulés par les Anglais [sic!], ces derniers étant avisés de leurs appareillages et meme des routes suivies."

I don't know the names of the ships involved in the previous trips (or trip), and I think that the devious route followed via Algeria was intended to mislead the British into thinking that Algeria was the real destination of the cargo.

As for the non-information of the Italian submarines, that does not come as a surprise to me at all, seeing the very large number of mistakes (i.e. neutral shipping attacked) they made...