@Brian-Cannon don’t be -too- scared of fighters. For the 10 IPC cost of the fighter you can buy 2 INF + ART which will defeat the fighter at 98% odds while the fighter has 2% of winning an attack. If you push fodder units while your opponent pushes high-quality units too early you should win. Any player spending all their income on high-end units is disadvantaged against one buying mostly or all fodder.
Honestly if I saw an Allied first-turn purchase like this I would probably immediately assume I would win as the Axis (maybe making me cocky enough to make a mistake, which could happen). The only thing Russia will do with the fighters is trade territory with Germany but they will quickly run out of fodder. Maybe the extra defense will help them hold Moscow a few turns longer- so what? Just take everything else and start doing SBR on Moscow when Russia is down to 8 income.
Something that might make this buy useful for the Allies is if the point of these fighters is to be placed on carriers purchased round 2. It might be a viable strategy to place 4 fighters E USA to have them land on UK carriers dropped in SZ 7 turn 2 but as I understand it A&AO doesn’t correctly implement this rule. In this case these fighters would either have to start a shuck going through Greenland->London or the US would build carriers for SZ 11 so that newly made fighters can get to London in 1 move after being directly produced in SZ 11. With US fighters building up in London the Germans won’t be able to maintain a fleet in the Baltic for long if they are trying, and the US planes can land to defend any territory taken by the UK in Europe on their turn. Keeping behind enough units to recapture territories held by air -might- be enough to save Russia, but what is Japan doing all this time? This sounds like a plan designed for a very fast KGF so India should fall by J3/4. If Japan has been sending units to Yunnan every turn it will be able to take India with a combined attack of land units by sea + walk from Burma and its carrier-based air which will crush any defense of India that is just mostly air. Plus if Japan is willing to sacrifice its transports you can leave its navy in SZ 61 to keep having a standoff with any US forces camped at the Solomons, but even if the whole navy goes in to India you can still counterattack any US invasion of Borneo.
