Building a powerful Indian Ocean fleet

As new King George V-class battleships enter service, the modernized Queen Elizabeth-class ships can move east in stages rather than stripping the Atlantic all at once. Rodney and the fast battlecruiser Repulse add heavy gunpower, while Ark Royal, Glorious, and Furious supply a three-carrier aviation core. The older carriers are not Britain's newest designs, but they carry enough aircraft for deterrence and can operate flexibly while Unicorn and the later Implacable-class ships remain unavailable. Basing this fleet in the Indian Ocean, especially at Ceylon, provides more support infrastructure than Singapore and keeps it close enough to respond to Japan. A few R-class battleships with Eagle and Hermes can still protect British interests farther west, so the eastern concentration does not leave every secondary theater uncovered. The larger Tribal, J, and L-class destroyers would probably remain in the Atlantic, with other destroyers screening the eastern fleet.