Another challenge came from the air. Although the first year of war did not settle finally the 20-year old controversy. on aeroplane versus battleship, it seemed to hint at the answer, Destroyers, submarines and cruisers, on one side or the other, were sunk by aerial bombs. Battleships sustained direct hits from heavy, armour piercing bombs, and did not sink. Battleships, escorted by normal numbers of lighter warships and screened where necessary by planes, seemed on the basis of the first year as effective as ever.
The moves in the naval war could not be traced like those on land. For the most part it was a silent duel between submarine and surface patrol, destroyer and destroyer, warship and convoy. The machinery of economic blockade and the anti-submarine patrol went into effect smoothly and without fanfare. Only occasionally did the sea war flare briefly.
The opening act came on the first day of general war, September 3, 1939, when the liner Athenia, bound for America with a civilian passenger list, was torpedoed. Americans were among the 142 who lost their lives. It looked like the start of unrestricted submarine warfare, but it wasn't.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.