It was because of the failure of the Army's expeditionary force's offensive and the consumption of a lot of funds at the same time, resulting in the war materials that should have been allocated to the Marine Corps being sent to Gu Xunlei's hands. In addition, in order to stabilize the situation in southern Mexico, two fleets that were originally used to transport war materials were temporarily supposed to transport food, clothing, medicine and other daily necessities, which also affected Han Shaofeng's offensive preparations.

It can be said that Han Shaofeng in Panama City is complaining all day long, but this cannot change the status quo. At the strong request of the Army, and with the direct intervention of the Prime Minister, the Army Expeditionary Force had a higher priority. In addition, stabilizing the situation in Mexico was directly related to the prestige of the empire in the American continent, and its political significance was enormous, even the priority of those Mexican war refugees was higher than that of the marines. In response to this situation, Yan Guozhong, Gan Yongxing, and even Nie Renfeng have made great efforts, hoping to provide more help to Han Shaofeng's marines, but before Gu Xunlei opens up the situation, it is difficult for Han Shaofeng to obtain more combat materials, and the combat operation of attacking the Greater Andres Islands can only continue to delay.

Many people have noticed the impact of Mexico's geography on the expeditionary force, and believe that Gu Xunlei's defeat was largely due to unfavorable terrain conditions. Of course, the influence of terrain conditions cannot be avoided, and it is indeed the most difficult problem of Gu Xunlei. But in the same way, we cannot deny the excellent performance of the US military in combat operations. In particular, in several defensive operations, the defense and retreat of the US troops were quite planned. When defending, he will not easily abandon his position, and when retreating, there is no chaos.

Tan Renhao noticed this when he read the battle report, if there was no excellent army to take advantage of, then the unfavorable terrain would not have much impact on the Gu Xunlei Expeditionary Force. In defensive operations, the Mexican rebels, who were in the majority, did not play as well as they should. In particular, during the combat operation of the siege of Tututepec, it was precisely because the Mexican rebels first lost the defensive line to the southwest of the city. As a result, the lines of communication in the places of communication with the outside world were exposed to the direct impact range of the expeditionary force's artillery fire, so that the US military lost outside support, and eventually led to the collapse of the US frontal defense line. On the contrary, the US military, which has a small number of troops, has demonstrated extremely high quality in combat operations.

At that time, there were more than 80,000 defenders in Tututepec, of which only about 10,000 American troops. It was the 20,000 U.S. >) that the eastern position of the U.S. Army became the biggest obstacle to the expeditionary force. Gu Xunlei sent a tank division and an infantry division to attack in turn. As a result, less than two regiments of American troops held out in defensive positions for more than 10 days, not only repelling dozens of rounds of attacks by the expeditionary force, but also losing much less than the expeditionary force. In addition, in the battle of Oaxaca, an American mountain infantry division successfully dragged the expeditionary force three times its size, and through layers of resistance and constant harassment, the expeditionary force was struggling, and finally stopped east of Oaxaca.

Throughout the campaign. The defense of the US military is very methodical. For example, Gu Xunlei originally thought that the US military would hold on to Gutierrez. And it was planned to encircle and annihilate the main forces of the US army in the southern region of Mexico here, but the result. The U.S. military did not waste troops in Gutierrez City at all, but rationally abandoned this city that had no way to defend and did not give Gu Xunlei a chance to encircle and annihilate the ground. Then, the U.S. forces withdrew from the Isthmus of Tevanpec, where it was difficult to establish a strong defensive line, retreated into the mountains, and used the cities of Tututepec and Oaxaca to form a new defensive line, which consumed a large number of troops and war materials of the expeditionary force, and eliminated the spirit of the expeditionary force's offensive. It thwarted the high morale of the expeditionary force and boosted the morale of the American army. Ultimately. Even if Gu Xunlei defeated these two cities, it would be impossible to continue to advance.

This whole set of defensive deployment was quite effective, and the US military took advantage of the initiative to retreat, stubbornly resist, and struggled to defend, and it took more than a month, as well as some areas that could not be defended, to finally block the pace of the expeditionary force, and let the expeditionary force suffer a heavy blow. Relatively speaking, the material problem is certainly still secondary, and when the large-scale offensive fails to achieve the goal, the impact on the morale and morale of the army is the most critical. Prior to this, ordinary officers and soldiers from Gu Xunlei to the expeditionary force believed that they could defeat Mexico in one go, drive the U.S. troops back to the mainland, and eventually enter the U.S. mainland to fight. And after the first offensive campaign, no one thought so, and most people thought that it might not take two or three years to liberate all of Mexico, let alone invade the United States from there.

This change in mentality has a very serious impact on the morale of the army, even if Gu Xunlei is not pessimistic about this, but when deploying the next combat operations, Gu Xunlei will definitely change. Comparing the naval victories on the European side at that time, the morale of the Army Expeditionary Force is even more problematic. For the expeditionary force at that time, what they needed was not a leap forward, but a major victory, a major victory based on the annihilation of a large number of American troops.

Gu Xunlei knew this very well, in the first offensive campaign, the expeditionary force did not annihilate the US army in an organized manner, and its largest battle was only to encircle and annihilate an American infantry regiment. In previous battles, especially in the battles on the Australian mainland, Gu Xunlei commanded several campaign operations to annihilate the US army and group army-level corps, but this time, he only killed one regiment at a time! It can be said that Gu Xunlei himself is eager to get a major victory. When planning the next round of offensive operations, Gu Xunlei put the annihilation of the US military forces in the first place of the task. It can be said that it was the setback suffered in the first offensive campaign that finally made Gu Xunlei revise the entire offensive plan.

At that time, in addition to Gu Xunlei, there was another important figure on the battlefield, this is Gu Xunlei's opponent, who served as the commander-in-chief of the US Western Theater of Operations, and also served as the commander-in-chief of the US forces in Mexico, and was responsible for the unified command of the US Army General Eisenhower in the western theater of the American continent. To a large extent, Eisenhower accurately judged the campaign intentions of the expeditionary force, made correct deployments, and issued accurate orders during the campaign, so that the US forces were able to thwart the expeditionary force's attack.

With the vast majority of the Imperial Army generals, to

Unlike the generals, Eisenhower did not personally command the front, while the general headquarters of the party mobilized the troops at the front by telegram and telegram orders. Unlike the generals who commanded combat operations in the rear, Eisenhower rarely gave orders through the middle command, often directly to the combat units at the front. Under normal circumstances, Eisenhower would have given direct command of the operations of combat units at the division level, and in special cases, he would even give orders directly to commanders at the regimental level. This kind of "overstepping" command places quite high demands on the commander. If Eisenhower could not accurately grasp the situation on the front line, it would be easy to make wrong decisions and give wrong orders, which would eventually lead to the defeat of the campaign. However, in the more than a month of fighting, Eisenhower made few mistakes, or even made no serious mistakes, which also proved that he had better access to information from the front and made accurate decisions.

This was the first time Eisenhower had shown his talent in a head-to-head confrontation, and it was also the first time that an Imperial Army general had "played off" with the US Army general. It wasn't at this time that Gu Xunlei had heard of the name "Eisenhower." When he was commanding the Army in the Australian theater, Eisenhower served as commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater, organized defenses in New Zealand, and drew up a counterattack plan, but it was not implemented. But the problem is that before this, Gu Xunlei had only heard of the name of this US Army general at most. No experience in fighting him. In fact, few imperial generals had fought against Eisenhower at the time.

Before Gu Xunlei ran into trouble, Tan Renhao and Han Shaofeng in Panama had dealt with Eisenhower. It was Eisenhower who planned the surprise attack on Mexico and eventually instigated a coup d'état by several Mexican generals to force the Mexican government into exile. But this understanding was not enough, and immediately, Tan Renhao was transferred to the European battlefield, and Han Shaofeng quickly stabilized the situation in Central America. And Gu Xunlei came to take over its mission in Central America. The two had only seen Eisenhower's methods of planning raids, but they were not aware of his ability to command frontal combat.

After reading the battle report submitted by the Army, Tan Renhao went to find Eisenhower's personal information provided by the intelligence department. It didn't take long for him to realize that Eisenhower was definitely a man capable of causing great trouble for the Imperial army. If Spruance was the territory of the American admirals who held back the Imperial Navy's offensive at sea, then Eisenhower was Spruance on land. Can Gu Xunlei quickly recover Mexico. And to advance the front to the territory of the United States, it depends on whether he can quickly defeat Eisenhower, if not, I am afraid that the Imperial Expeditionary Force will really take two or three years to recover Mexico.

At that time, Tan Renhao originally wanted to contact Gu Xunlei directly and remind Gu Xunlei to pay attention to the opponent in the north, but later he gave up this idea. It stands to reason that Gu Xunlei can be regarded as an old fritter on the battlefield, and it is impossible not to realize the strength of the opponent. In addition, now Gu Xunlei is definitely on the fire. And Tan Renhao has only won the victory on the European side, if the telegram has passed at this time. On the contrary, it will make Gu Xunlei misunderstand. In the end, Tan Renhao also quickly put aside the matter of the Mexican battlefield. Because at the beginning of May, he received the latest information from the intelligence department, and in this information, there was the matter that Tan Renhao was most concerned about, that is, who would be the commander of the US Atlantic Fleet.

What Tan Renhao feared the most was that it didn't happen, and it was still Admiral Kim who was also the commander of the Atlantic Fleet. However, another incident dashed Tan Renhao's last bit of hope. Admiral King is only the nominal commander, and his primary responsibility remains the US Secretary of the Navy. And he appointed a new chief of staff of the fleet at the end of '26, and it was Spruance who was appointed [Chief of the General Staff.] Other words. Spruance is the number one man in the Atlantic Fleet, and as long as Admiral King has been in the Admiralty, then Spruance is the one who commands the Atlantic Fleet.

At that time, Spruance was removed from his duties as commander of the Fifth Fleet, and if he was directly appointed as commander of the Atlantic Fleet, it would certainly not be reasonable, and the president of the United States would not necessarily agree, so Admiral King made a detour and appointed Spruance as chief of the general staff of the fleet, and actually performed the duties of commander of the fleet, which was easier to approve. It is precisely because of this that the Imperial Intelligence Department has spent a lot of effort, and it has not been able to determine the commander of the new land, otherwise, the intelligence department would have gained something a long time ago.

Spruance became chief of the General Staff of the Atlantic Fleet, and also explained the previous actions of the Atlantic Fleet. If other generals had held this important position, I am afraid that they would have led the fleet to set off to find the main fleet of the Imperial Navy for a decisive battle. Spruance must have known the reality of the Atlantic Fleet, which allowed the fleet to stay in the Chesapeake Bay, where it had been conducting intensive training without rushing the fleet out on the expedition. In addition, when he went to meet the fleet, Spruance must have expected that the First Fleet would go to intercept it, and before the Atlantic Fleet had full combat strength, it was certainly not an opponent of the First Fleet, and he did not want to fight Tan Renhao in this situation, so he was delayed for a lot of time during the voyage, and finally missed the First Fleet and returned to Norfolk Military Port without damage.

After figuring out some issues that he couldn't determine before, Tan Renhao also had serious concerns about Spruance's comeback. Spruance is the only U.S. Navy admiral in the U.S. Navy who can cause great trouble for Tan Renhao on the battlefield. Not only Tan Renhao, Huang Xiaotian, and Jiang Zhongmin could not take advantage of Spruance's hands. It can be said that the Fifth Fleet was able to be annihilated in the first place, to a large extent, precisely because Spruance left the Fifth Fleet at the most critical time, and if Spruance was still in command of the Fifth Fleet in the end, I am afraid that the Pacific War would drag on for a long time. Now that Spruance has become Chief of Staff of the Atlantic Fleet, how much time will it take for the Imperial Navy to defeat the US Atlantic Fleet and ensure supremacy in the Atlantic?