There seems to be some discussion that pearl harbor is NOT an automatic play on J1.
Soooooooooo, lets say no pearl harbor occurs. That gives the allies another carrier and bs to protect the shuck. How about, the us carrier and bs go to the atlantic, and uk buys a carrier too, but sends it to the kareilia northern sz. This could take a few turns(3?), cuz you would’nt want to do it before the us carrier is in the uk sz to protect the uk transports. With the uk carrier in the karelia sz, there would be no danger for the russian transports.
Also, if germany has no navy, OR airforce, then no direct threat to russian transports would be there.
Again, i think its a serious gamble, but I could envision a couple of scenarios where it might be plausible. But as someone said, you’d hvae to be playing some real newbs or there must be some really funky die rolls (like the germans lose all their planes and navy on g1and uk1 - in which case, its prolly over anyway).