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Bear with me on this one.

I'm working, slowly, on a timeline that includes no European war in the 1940s (though thanks to the pod and the reason for the lack of a war, rearmament is pretty equivalent to OTL) but a far eastern one that starts with the Japanese coveting British possessions and trade.

The Admiralty has dispatched in the recent past a nucleas of an eastern fleet based around a 'fast striking force' and with the tension between Japan annd Britain reaching fever pitch a fleet focussed around several fleet carriers and battleships has now been dispatched east. Main fleet to Singapore.

War is days away, weeks at the outside, and the eastern fleet is transitting suez. Stops are Kamran, Trincomalee before Singapore is relieved. Well that's the plan anyway. And just the start of it.

Japan wants to engage the enemy more closely and provoke a decisive battle soonest. A dashing admiral decides that the Nihion Kaigun are going to catch Andrew off guard and hit the Eastern fleet hard and fast in the Indian Ocean in a fleet action, while the survivors are going to be penned into Trincomalee by cutting of the oil supply lines from Burma and Persia.

How does that sound strategically and tactically? What happens next?

(One scenario I'm thinking about involved the Eastern fleet feinting to Attu atoll while actually heading east to cut off the Japanese return and allowing an engagement in the vicinity of Ceylon potentially under land based air cover too.)
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