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 Trieste. 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.

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'.

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.