One good thing about those God-awful arrows is that it has forced me to play without icons on, and I'm really happy that I can now play this game guilt free.
After all, pilots didn't have big friendly arrows and icons in real life, and if I'm playing the sim with realism in mind, why should I?
It's not easy to play with icons off...at first it's really daunting and a bit frustrating, but you have to learn to train your eyes to spot a hint of movement, a flash of cross or roundel as the enemy flashes past you, a speck in the distance, a hint of yellow nose (in the case of the 109) and also you have to learn to discern between the different shapes in the sky and what aircraft they represent - especially from the 6 o' clock.
Not easy.
But at the same time, so wonderfully rewarding when you bag a kill.
On the other hand, I've spent a fair bit of time tracking an aircraft only to find out he was a squad mate, and on more than one occasion I have killed a friendly by accident.
I remember shooting down this poor Defiant, thinking it was a 109, and as I realised my mistake I actually said out loud: "Sorry mate."
But to the topic of the thread...it's difficult to spot aircraft on the deck, but by no means impossible. As said earlier, if you really can't find anything, take a page out of Helmut Liepfert's book and dive to the deck yourself and look above. It's helped me many times.