Well, spotting a sub at periscope depth can be easy in clear blue water. Have you ever been to Shanghai and the sea in it's neighborhood?
it's like soup, you won't see anything there. In a clear blue ocean on a sunny day, with not much swell you'll see a sub at periscope depth from quite a distance as a dark spot in the water. Every aviator would investigate that dark spot.
It really depends upon the clearness of the water.
As i recall from memories from long ago, we were calibrating a MAD device (to detect submarines magnatic field) off the coast of vietnam. It's some 20 years ago. I recall the water being brownish (150 NM east of the coast) so nothing could be seen. We got a MADMAN from something, performed some figures of 8 and found a solution. We reeld the MAD bird in and went to hover over our firing solution. It went west to the vietnam coast. After about 5 minutes a submarine (he obviously heard us hovering above) surfaced. It was there in an instant. Never saw him rise up from the deep. It turned out to be an old "F" class submarine from the russians. We waved at eachother and went our seperate ways.........
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