Japanese cruisers targeted the traffic India depended on

Allied submarines operated in the Malacca Strait, the same strategic corridor through which Japanese forces later withdrew. Ozawa's cruiser force operated separately from the carriers and attacked coastal traffic important to moving food and goods around India. Kido Butai approached around Sumatra toward Ceylon, creating a divided operation whose elements threatened different parts of the theater at once. Operation C combined covering duties, commerce attack, and carrier raiding across separate formations.