Pound's Ceylon plan for the Far East

The Churchill-Pound disagreement turned on basing and timing. Pound's proposed force, including Nelson-class battleships, Renown, and a carrier, was meant to operate from Ceylon because it would not be large enough to fight a major portion of the Imperial Japanese Navy directly. From Ceylon it could remain a deterrent whose location and movements were less exposed. The wider strategic problem was that the Far East war arrived before British planning expected it, compressing a 1942-43 readiness horizon into late 1941.