Last week was the first of Adolf Hitler's vaunted intensification of the counter-blockade. It was too early to tell how the great air-sea battle would lean, but it took only a few hours and a few claims to tell that the battle was for keeps.
Berlin declared within 72 hours that a speedboat had sunk a British destroyer; "newly unleashed submarines commanded by virtual novices" had destroyed 192,300 tons of merchant shipping; airplanes had sunk and disabled 16 ships of 102,000 tons west of Ireland and five others of 23,500 tons off the east coast of England and Scotland.
All week long...
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