If he had alot more surface ships that was going to be destroyed by fighters, the option of a later retreat would make it important to roll vs the transports. But i see now how the fight was resolved so thanks for the quick replies.

Ok, another followup: So the subs can actually hit transports during the resolve combat phase, but only when the transports are the only ones left to hit? So for instance if he still had some surface ships for my fighters to hit, he would roll subs vs my transports?

I played a game putting an IC in france on the second turn with great success today. Might be even better to buy it the first turn. What happened in my game was that i could constantly replenish the losses i took in france and keep uk and us at bay and still shove alot of units at russia each turn, just in time to counter attack the counter attack. Since i built my IC on the second turn the russian front dried up and russia countered me all the way into hungary because i lacked infantry.

I got a question regarding this rule.

In my last game, the us player attacked my jap fleet.

I had 3 transports, 1 cruiser, 1 battleship, 2 carriers and 4 fighters.
He had 4 subs, 2 destoyers, 1 battleship, 1 fighter and 1 carrier.

My fighters could only hit his surface ships, while my other ships were hitting his subs.

So what remained was that i had 4 fighters left vs 3 of his subs.
I also had 3 transports. So my question is: do you sink the transports and land the fighters at the island? Or do the transports remain and the subs have to submerge? We decided to sink the transports and land the fighters, but there was alot of discussion about this.