Agar was attempting to add anti-aircraft guns in Colombo and to dismantle and refit her engines and boilers to meet the challenges ahead when word arrived that an enemy fleet had entered the Indian Ocean. For an account of the Japanese attack on British positions in the Bay of Bengal see Indian Ocean raid. He stopped his refit, reassembled his machinery and put to sea as fast as he could. Acting on information that the Japanese fleet had turned back, Admiral Somerville ordered Dorsetshire back into Colombo to finish the refit. Agar again began to dismantle his machinery and clean his boilers. He was told by the port admiral that anti-aircraft guns would arrive in two days for his ship. It was a Saturday, 4 April, the day before Easter. The Dorsetshire was part of a scratch fleet of obsolete British battleships with two small obsolete aircraft carriers and attached cruisers hurriedly put together to stem the Japanese naval advance into the Indian Ocean. Admiral James Somerville had moved the main part of the fleet to a secret base at Addu Atoll in the Maldives, as he knew that his fleet was no match for the Japanese. His main duty was to keep the sea lanes open to India, to the Persian Gulf oilfields and to the Eighth Army in Egypt, at that time attempting to stop the German and Italian armies under General Erwin Rommel. End of the Dorsetshire Dorsetshire was in some ways a victim of the lack of British intelligence about the capabilities of the Japanese fleet. Neither Agar nor Somerville had any idea that the range of Japanese naval dive bombers was almost twice that of comparable British aircraft. To survive after getting a second warning of the presence of a large westbound Japanese Fleet in the Indian Ocean he would have had to leave Colombo as fast as possible and head west at top speed. On Saturday afternoon, 4 April 1942 an urgent message summoned Agar to the base Operations Room in Colombo. A Consolidated Catalina flying boat had just reported that it was shadowing a large force of enemy carriers accompanied by battleships steering west from the Malacca Straits, directly for Ceylon. This was the fleet of Admiral Nagumo. Admiral Somerville was in the Maldives beyond the immediate reach of the advancing Japanese. Upon receiving the news he moved further out of Nagumo's way