 Terrestrial structures and other topographic features, from this direction, also served to clutter and confuse the pilots and their bombardiers as they tried to quickly pick out the more important enemy targets in the quickly approaching harbor.The direction and added background clutter may have also served to confuse and slow down the reaction time of the anti-aircraft defense crews who likewise had little time to identify and target the incoming bombers and resulted in these batteries only opening fire once the B-24s were on top of them.The B-24 flight had hoped to find and hit Italian battleships in the harbor.