Peter Gunn
Master Sergeant
I think you're hitting the nail on the head now, it'd be a tall order to get the RAF and the RN to coordinate a major assault like this on rather short notice. I'm not saying it's impossible but rather improbable. Whilst they did have two months warning (or thereabouts) it's still quite tough to get that kind of cooperation/coordination going for training and now you're in the middle of a war with the possibility of battle at any moment.
Consider the Guadalcanal campaign 4 months later and here's just a couple of examples:
Early on August 8, a New Zealand flight crew spots a Japanese force headed down the Solomon Islands chain comprised of several types of warships including gunboats. Gunboats were not officially recognized as fleet units by the USN. Turns out it was 5 heavy and 2 light cruisers and a destroyer all knocking down 25 knots. Through a labyrinth of communications twists and turns, by the time USN HQ (Ghormley) was aware of it, Long Lance's were (literally) in the water on the way to sinking 4 American heavy cruisers off Savo Island.
On the morning of November 13 after the vicious night fight named the first naval battle of Guadalcanal, the light cruiser Helena (Captain Gilbert Hoover, senior officer afloat) is shepherding the badly damaged heavy cruiser San Francisco, the extremely damaged light cruiser (broken keel) Juneau, the damaged destroyer Sterett and the destroyer Fletcher. An IJN submarine (I-26) fires on Helena but hits Juneau, the light cruisers magazine detonates and the ship is literally gone in seconds in a massive explosion that obliterates the cruiser and has debris raining down on the other ships.
No one could have survived but Captain Hoover radios a patrolling B-17 overhead to send PBY's to check out the area just in case. The B-17 acknowledged the message but it didn't reach Halsey's HQ for something like 8 hours. Unfortunately, there were over 100 men in the water, of which 10 were rescued days later.
And this was in an active Theater of Operations with (on the face of it) a decent communications structure that had been established months earlier. Apparently not as decent as they thought as it was discovered how may different comm frequencies were used and how long it took to decode and deliver messages.
This is not to try to blame the disaster at Savo Island on the New Zealand aircrew or the loss of the Juneau's crew on the B-17. Neither of them did anything wrong but communications between not only different services but different nationalities was just too much for the system to handle until it was sorted out in early '43. Hell, there were even problems with communications between Halsey's Area of Operations and MacArthur's Area on New Guinea.
I wouldn't expect the RAF and the RN to do much better in the Indian Ocean in early '42 either, no knock on either branch but extrapolating from the Channel Dash has me doubtful.
Back to Captain Hoover, in his defense, he had not slept in over 24 hours, had brought his ship through a ferocious night fight unscathed and after knocking the living crap out of several IJN DD's and cruisers and was now trying to get the few shattered ships under his command to Espritu Santo. Not to mention the Captain of the Juneau was his good friend from the Naval Academy days (that must have hurt). None of this helped and he was relieved of command of Helena and his career effectively over, it's a long sad tale with a rather vindictive Miles Browning playing a major role in screwing over a damn good officer. Hoover's own exec thought it was the most courageous thing he'd seen for the captain to make that decision, but virtually all the officers present agreed he did the right thing.
Ah but I wax far too poetic in making my point, my apologies, I'm just tuning up for a writing career after I retire...
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