That was quite a long time ago by 1946, but in a setting where Fusō and Britannia are still allies (to the point where the former has a major naval base on the latter's shores), it's plausible that the IFN might have consulted with the original manufacturers on some technical matter or another. Possibly a modernization, as her most recent one would have been in 1935, 11 years ago at that point.

I did think fairly hard about Kongō's English connection when "casting" for this, since it seemed like such an obvious alignment, but in the end, I couldn't quite get it to fit together. I think that might be in part because she wouldn't be content to be part of a one-shot and would end up following "the Admiral" home, despite the fact that a) he currently lives well inland and b) that would probably cause the IFN, if not the Fusō government, to Want a Word or Two With Him. :)

(Irritatingly, casting Kongō in the "main" UF universe is even thornier. In virtually every other case of overlap I can think of offhand, one or the other of the Arpeggio and KanColle versions of a given character is clearly ahead of the other in my estimation, and deciding which to include is therefore not difficult. The KanColle version of Haruna, for instance, wins handily, as does the Arpeggio version of Takao (largely since the KanColle one doesn't have a particularly strong characterization in the first place). Kongō, though... that's a hard call. :)

>>doctors (although how did that work, anyway?)
>
>By harnessing the power of bureaucracy, I'd guess- something like "oh,
>I'm being transferred, I'll get that done at the next station"
>followed by "oh I got that done at the last station, they must've lost
>the paperwork"?

Yeah, that seems likely. I'll get into it a little more in the next bit; although the brass and the bureaucracy were fooled right up to the point where the ship sank, the same cannot be said of everybody aboard.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.