I start with a purchase of 3 CVs for the US. You can get planes to fill them up later on. It is nice to stack a bunch of fighters in Midway. If the Japanese are careless, your planes can hit SZ 6 and then land on the carrier group in CZ7. It doesn’t happen often, but is beautiful when you can pull off that raid.
On turn 2, I transition to subs and fighters as the primary way to damage their fleet. You can also convoy raid their economy to bits if you can get a few subs into the appropriate sea locations.
Afterwards, I do mostly subs plus a destroyer. Depending on the Japanese spending and success against China, I transition to the European side.