The carrier's staff welcomed the returning aircrews with food, drink, and a cake shaped like a Swordfish. Excited retellings soon faded as exhaustion set in and some men continued seeing tracer when they closed their eyes. At dawn Illustrious rejoined the fleet and Cunningham's flagship hoisted a signal praising the ship's execution of the manoeuvre. The understated wording carried exceptional weight in Royal Navy culture and marked immediate institutional recognition of the raid.
Notable Point · 3:19:26-3:20:54
Celebration, exhaustion, and Cunningham's signal
A wardroom celebration quickly gave way to exhaustion before Cunningham paid Illustrious a characteristically restrained compliment.