At the start of the war, the southern transportation network lacked the infrastructure to support critical wartime activities. The construction and expansion of military and production facilities across the South, like the Bell Bomber Plant and the Atlanta Naval Air Station, created the need for greater access by land and air. To accommodate these new priorities, the federal government reorganized agencies like the Civil Aeronautics Administration, while also budgeting and tasking agencies like the Army Corps of Engineers to perform work out of their usual scope.