Since the battle of the Marshall Islands, Itami had been keeping her navy within the sea of Japan as a protective measure. Japan only had four battleships left, and a handful of cruisers. The rest of what remained of the Imperial Japanese were small flotillas of destroyers and submarines, which did their best to protect the Japanese transport convoys.
However, Berengar was determined to eliminate what was left of Japan's naval forces, and thus after a few weeks of his pilots getting intimately familiar with their new aircraft, the Kaiser tasked the pilots of the 6th Carrier Air Wing to conduct an all out attack on the Japanese Navy which was currently patrolling in the sea of Japan.
Currently, the sixth carrier strike group was roughly halfway between Taiwan and the Bohai Sea. Their official objective was to enter the region and provide air support to the Joseon-German coalition force. However, in reality, they had a much more secret mission.
