Experiments indicate that the radiating near zone of a compressional circular transducer directly coupled to a homogeneous and isotropic solid has the following structure: there are geometrical zones where one can distinguish a plane compressional wave and toroidal waves, both compressional and shear, radiated by the transducer rim. As has been shown previously the modern diffraction theory allows to describe these explicitly. It also gives explicit asymptotic description of waves present in the transition zones. In case of a normal incidence of a plane compressional wave the explicit expressions have been obtained by Achenbach and co-authors for the fields diffracted by a penny-shaped crack. We build on the above work by applying the uniform GTD to model an oblique incidence of a plane compressional wave on an elliptical crack. We compare our asymptotic results with numerical results based on the boundary integral code as developed by Glushkovs, Krasnodar University, Russia. The asymptotic formulas form a basis of a code for high-frequency simulation of ultrasonic scattering by elliptical cracks situated in the vicinity of a compressional circular transducer, currently under development at our Center. ©2000 American Institute of Physics.