Hi Grant:

Great insight. Interestingly the US usually deployed submarines in advance of any planned naval conflict and along with destroyers they became the main rescue mechanism for pilots.

Destroyers were positioned to quickly pick up pilots that had aborted their carrier take off ending up in the drink. Also destroyers were integral and strategically placed along the directly of travel for those pilots that were struggling with control or fuel due to battle damage. When a destroyer or sub returned the downed airman to their carrier, their reward was a gallon of ice cream!

I remember reading an interview with a Japanese pilot who watched helplessly just off the coast of Japan as his mate was struggling with his parachute shrouds in the water while an American PBY swopped in with fighter cover and swept up two US pilots.

It had to be tremendously frustrating to the Japanese but this attrition is what became the genesis of the kamikaze program. Here Japan used pilots with little training to fly their laden aircraft into US ships. It was a development that haunted the US Navy for years (1943-45).

Walter