During the Tunisian Campaign, after the Battle of Skerki Bank caused the loss of 1,500 soldiers in one night and showed that troop transports were too vulnerable to the Allied offensive, Italian destroyers were extensively used in fast troop-transport missions to Tunisia. Sailing from ports in Sicily, a destroyer division could deliver some 1,200 troops with their personal equipment in one night; of 77,741 troops sent to Tunisia by sea between November 1942 and May 1943, some 52,000 were carried by the destroyers, with the loss of less than 700 men (compared to nearly 5,000 troops lost at sea while being carried by merchant ships). At the same time, Italian destroyers were deeply involved in escort missions of supply convoys and minelaying missions aimed at defending the main shipping lanes between Italy and Tunisia; during the Tunisian campaign, Italian destroyers carried out 535 escort missions, 301 transport missions and 132 minelaying missions (laying 4,093 mines overall).