I’ve tried this strategy (the middle earth, not operation ricochet) against myself yesterday. I did make some mistakes, and left calcutta too vurnareble, with not enough strike force to take it back. But besides that, I had the japanese navy, or at least 2AC + some extra, sitting in SZ39 (outside of calcutta) in J3. This prevented me from being able to shuck to persia, and I had to go to egypt with the South African transports.
I imagine that even if I did not make the mistake and Calcutta did not fall J4, but is just “disabled” till more japanese land troops can arrive, the threat of the navy on SZ80 (persia) would prevent me from shucking troops there, and thus halving the troops that can reach calcutta due to only the persian factory being able to supply by land. How would I deal with this? You state threatening Japan with US/ANZAC. How, roughly speaking, would I go about that?
In this specific example, Japan had a naval base, air base, and factory in FIC, so pretty much the entire Asian coastline is in reach of most of the aircrafts, and several ships. With US focusing on the creation of the 4 lane highway, they do not have enough ships to resist a counterattack, and not enough transports to threaten a permanent beachhead.
So how then do I deal with a Japanese navy blockading Calcutta and threatening SZ80’s transport shuck?