....I've yet to experience the air problems described here. Yes, there are quite a few planes once you get to a certain range of the home islands, that is to be expected. As I've posted in other threads, I draw range circles from known enemy airfields out to 500mile radii and use that as a graphic "tripwire" to know when I should expect enemy air activity. It works fairly well.
With your radar there's really no excuse for being caught on the surface or avoiding aircraft entirely.
I can honestly say I usually don't know what type of aircraft have tried to intercept my sub! I'm playing full realism and I do NOT hang around on the surface waiting to see what type of aircraft is heading my way.
If I get an air radar contact I'll continue course and speed until I get an "aircraft spotted" alert. If I've spotted him and I'm in a calm or reasonably calm sea then realistically I can expect he'll spot me ergo "crash dive". I don't try to find out if it's a Zero, a Betty or an Emily (that takes up precious dive time). Avoiding complete contact with aircraft IMHO seems to keep the overall number of aircraft events down to a tolerable level. Yes, I am sometimes attacked but by then I'm well under and have changed course and am clear of danger. After an hour or so I resume course and surface (checking with sonar and periscope first of course).
