Welcome aboard young kaleun.
no its not normal
although there should be less aircraft at the beginning
of the war you should be encountering them more unless
your patrolling the antartic
as for the escorts its clearly not normal
GWX escorts have Clairvoyancy 2.0 built in
either your being enormously effective as a skipper
or something has gone wrong
the description of your escort behaviour sounds like the
reverse of your situation.
in every case GWX escorts are better tuned and
from hard experience this results in them being
perceptively more agressive to the player.
suggestions I would venture reinstall repatch
and then GWX of course.
but you may want to wait for some others to post
advice before going that deep
M