USS New Orleans tests cruiser mobility and fleet coordination

New Orleans began with European and Pacific voyages that tested the mobility expected of a heavy cruiser, including a Panama Canal transit and an exercise with the airship USS Macon and its aircraft off California. She then joined Scouting Force Cruiser Division Six at San Pedro and took part in Fleet Problem XVI. Conducted in five stages over five million square miles with 321 naval vessels and 70,000 personnel, it rehearsed coordination across Midway, Hawaii, and the Aleutian Islands. Calling the entire undertaking one exercise was distinctive, although that label does not mean other navies trained on a smaller operational scale. The Royal Navy linked tabletop and live exercises across the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and China Station, so the comparison turns partly on administrative packaging as well as operational ambition.