The dam of the Mississippi River in Orleans was blown up, and Spruance suffered more than all of them had expected. At the time, the Atlantic Fleet was preparing to go to New Orleans, and when the flood quickly engulfed the city and the harbor area, Spruance had to first consider modifying the fleet's course.

The news came on the morning of the 18th, when Spruance was thinking about what to do next after New Orleans. And only the night before, he received a telegram from Admiral King, knowing that the bombing of the homeland had made the president unbearable, although Admiral King did his best to get the president not to interfere in the actions of the fleet, but if Spruance could not quickly get a victory enough to show off on the table, then the president would definitely give the fleet a direct battle order, and at that time, Spruance would not be able to continue to act in his own way. Moreover, in the case of direct intervention by the president, Admiral Kim will not be of much help.

Just a few days after the bombing of four large airports in Florida, New Orleans was bombed, and it was deadly. By the time Spruance received the telegram, the flood had engulfed almost the entire city, killing or missing at least 20,000 citizens and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Even if the port area was not completely submerged at that time, it was impossible to continue operations due to a lack of workers. In addition, flooding is still a trifle. The problems that arise are much more complex.

At that time, a large amount of silt had accumulated on the bed of the Mississippi River, and when the levee burst, it flooded into the city. That is, even if the flood waters retreated. New Orleans will not be able to restore order quickly, and it will take months and a lot of manpower and material resources to clean up the mud. In addition, after being flooded with mud, there is a lot of infrastructure in the city, such as power lines and communication circuits. Underground drainage systems, water supply systems, etc., have been damaged, and in order for the city to return to normal, these infrastructures have to be repaired, which requires more time, effort and resources.

As a matter of fact. Until the end of the war, New Orleans did not return to normal. According to the results of the statistics of the US government at that time. During the flooding, at least hundreds of millions of tons of silt poured into the city, more than eighty percent of the bungalows were flooded with mud, and most of the wooden houses were destroyed, except for a few reinforced concrete houses with solid structures. After the floodwaters reced, it would take at least $5,000 to clean up the silt alone, and more time would have to be spent repairing the city's infrastructure and building new homes for the citizens. And in normal times. The U.S. government can activate disaster contingency plans and mobilize a lot of manpower and material resources, but in times of war, especially when the flames of war have burned to the doorstep, where can the U.S. government find so many manpower and materials? In the case of a war-themed situation, it would be more cost-effective to open a new port, abandon New Orleans for the time being, and restore New Orleans after the war. In fact, the U.S. government did exactly that, just to show that it cared about New Orleans. A limited number of rescue teams were involved, and the main task was only to find people who went missing when the flood struck. And not to save the city.

Comparatively speaking, the loss of New Orleans has not yet had a very large impact. Although New Orleans was the second largest port in the continental United States and the largest port in the Gulf of Mexico at the time, there were many other ports nearby. In addition, the population of New Orleans is only a few hundred thousand, and the loss of materials is not very large, and many of the problems affecting the war can be solved by redeploying supplies from nearby areas and by other means. It can be said that the real impact of this bombing still exposed the fragility of the American infrastructure.

As the world's only superpower bordering two oceans, the United States has a unique geographical position, especially after defeating Mexico, eliminating the most powerful enemy around it, and rapidly expanding its power throughout the Americas, as well as the opening of the Panama Canal, the United States has a geographical strategic advantage that no other country can match. Before the outbreak of the first global war, the United States actually no longer faced a threat on land, and in the east and west coastal directions, it was protected by the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic, so almost all Americans believed that their homeland would not be attacked, and as long as the United States still had a strong fleet, then the American homeland would be absolutely safe.

This not only reflected the mentality of the Americans at the time, but was actually the main strategy of the United States during the two wars. After the end of the first global war, the economic crisis forced almost all the great powers to take the initiative to limit their armaments, and there were only one or two countries that relied on military expansion to maintain economic development, and none of them were superpowers like the Tang Empire and the United States that had the strength to become global hegemon. The United States was not spared in the wave of disarmament, and at that time, the United States focused on reducing the army rather than the navy. By the time the Second Global War broke out, the U.S. Army had nearly 200,000 troops, and its equipment was so poor that it could barely be used. One can imagine how much the U.S. Army suffered during the interwar period. In contrast, during the twenty-year "truce", the US Navy was practically not affected much.

The Songjiang Naval Armaments Treaty was a set of treaties restricting the expansion of naval armaments in response to the unrestricted expansion of naval armaments, and the United States was one of the main countries advocating the signing of the treaty at that time. Through this treaty, the "two-power principle" of the Tang Imperial Navy has been broken, and it can be said that the United States has benefited the most from it, and it is precisely this treaty that the United States Navy and the Tang Imperial Navy have been recognized as equals.

Before the signing of this treaty, the size of the U.S. Navy was not comparable to that of the Tang Empire, and most of the warships were older. After the signing of the treaty, the Tang Empire had to start reducing the number of warships because it had too many warships, and because a large number of warships did not reach the maximum service period, there was no way to start building new warships, which led to the rare phenomenon that in the ten years after World War I, the Tang Imperial Navy almost did not build a few new warships

|I immediately began construction of new warships to supplement the shortfall in quotas. In addition, with the introduction of a large number of older warships, the U.S. Navy can build more new warships.

In other words, during the treaty period, the overall strength of the US Navy increased on an unprecedented scale by building a large number of new warships. For example, the "North Carolina" class battleships, which are of the same generation as the "Dignity" of the Tang Imperial Navy, have an extremely obvious pertinence in terms of performance, and their displacement, main gun caliber, armor thickness, speed, etc., are stronger than the "Dignity".

This is also a major reason why the Tang Imperial Navy has been unwilling to extend the term of the treaty, if it continues according to the situation at that time, in the 20s of the Tang calendar, the Tang .= serious decline, even if the old warships are retired as soon as possible and the tonnage is vacated to build new warships, it can only catch up with the United States in the 30s of the Tang calendar at most. In other words, the actual beneficiary of the naval arms treaty was the US Navy, and it was the Tang Imperial Navy that suffered the greatest loss.

The fact that the Americans still maintained a strong navy during the economic crisis is inseparable from their fundamental strategy. After its international status was recognized, the U.S. strategy changed. According to the overall strategy established by the United States before the war, the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are the natural shields of the United States, and the United States Navy will be able to defeat any enemy who tries to invade the United States on the ocean. Prevent the flames of war from reaching the continental United States. And as the U.S. Navy gradually possessed a maritime force sufficient to compete with any other power at the time, this strategy was basically guaranteed. Under these circumstances, who would have thought that the United States would be hit hard?

It can be said that it is precisely because the United States has always attached importance to the Navy. As a result, the defense of the homeland has been neglected, and the ability of critical infrastructure to resist attacks has been neglected. In addition, in the latter stages of the economic crisis, the United States revised its overall economic plan, modeled on the Tang Empire, adopting a state-daring policy to stimulate economic recovery through large-scale deficit spending on government finances. In this context, the infrastructure in the United States has reached a historic point. Then. Much of the critical infrastructure was built during the prewar decade, such as the three major highways and railroads that run east and west across the continental United States. In addition, dozens of major water conservancy projects have been built, countless bridges and tunnels have been built, embankments along the Mississippi River have been repaired, and more factories and mines have been built in the interior. Expansion of the terminal, but also with the advent of the civil aviation industry. A large number of new airports have also been built.

After the outbreak of war, this infrastructure was to a large extent an important aid to the rapid functioning of the American war machine. For example, the main oil-producing areas of the United States were in the south, and before the war, the main oil refineries and major oil consumers were on the East Coast and the Great Lakes. In addition, a large amount of minerals from the Midwest of the United States are transported by rail to factories in the Great Lakes region. Most importantly, it is. At that time, a quarter of the strategic goods produced in the eastern part of the United States and the Great Lakes region were transported to western ports by rail lines and then loaded onto ships to the front lines.

The vast infrastructure is the fundamental guarantee of war strength, but it has a serious flaw, that is, it does not have any relevant defensive considerations for possible attacks. For example, ninety out of five of the dozens of new dams built in the United States at that time were stress dams, rather than gravity dams with a stronger ability to withstand blows (mainly because stress dams had a relatively short construction period). And the construction investment is much less than that of heavy dams). In addition, the ground resistance of many bridges is also quite limited. At that time, almost all the bridges on the major roads and railways were easily destroyed, and if one bridge was blown up, the entire transportation artery would be paralyzed.

The barrage in New Orleans was just the tip of the iceberg, but a glimpse of the leopard in the tube is enough to show how limited the preparation of the United States for war was at that time. On the contrary, in the Tang Empire, because it was always considered that it would be attacked by Japan, the infrastructure in the coastal areas of the Tang Empire was built according to wartime standards, and its ability to resist attacks was much stronger, although these facilities were never attacked, but this also reflected the difference between the Tang Empire and the United States in terms of basic strategy.

As New Orleans was soaked in floods and mud, many Americans, including the American president, realized that the war was not far from their homeland, and that the Don Empire's bombers could already fly over their heads. While trying to solve the real problems caused by the paralysis of the Port of New Orleans, the President of the United States set up a special agency under the direct authority of the White House on 21 July, three days after the bombing of New Orleans.

At that time, the external name of the agency was "State Property Management Office", and it may not be easy to see directly what this agency really does. But if you think about it, it's clear. This agency is responsible for comprehensively assessing and testing the anti-attack capability of important strategic infrastructure facilities in the United States, especially the anti-bombing capability, and proposing relevant ways to enhance the anti-strike capability, and then cooperating with other relevant departments to solve the problem. And this agency is actually directly headed by the president, although it is not an independent department, but it has a very high authority, and it is often the one who leads the work of other departments. One can imagine how strong the shock of Americans was after New Orleans was flooded at that time.

It can be said that this is the most important strategic significance after the bombing of New Orleans. The Americans were not stupid and quickly grasped the crux of the problem, but it was almost impossible to quickly improve the resistance of the infrastructure to attack, and the United States invested a lot of resources in exchange for only allowing the bombers of the Tang Empire to drop some more bombs in the future. Therefore, the impact on the overall strategy of the United States cannot be underestimated, and even ultimately affects every American's attitude towards the war, and also affects the final choice of the United States.