The US Air Force and Navy developed extremely sophisticated air-sea rescue system as the war went on.

Who rescued you (if anyone) depended a great deal on where and when you crashed. Throughout the war, pilots who ditched near a carrier were quickly scooped up by escorting destroyers. During flight operations, a dedicated “plane guard” destroyer shadowed the carrier, ready to rescue any luckless aircrew. In fact, the practice continues to this day

If you went down further from home, that was a different story. Early in the war, the US didn’t have much in the way of specialized air-sea rescue forces. Whenever possible, ships and land-based planes would search an area after a battle to look for lost pilots. Midway is a great example of this practice in action. The task of locating and rescuing survivors fell mostly to Midway’s PBY Catalina patrol planes and PT boats.

The task facing the searchers was enormous. The battle had taken place over hundreds of miles of ocean. Scattered across this vast expanse were dozens of downed airplanes and their crews. On June 4th Midway-based USN, USMC, and USAAF aircraft had attacked the Japanese carrier task force. In exchange for just one torpedo hit on a Japanese tanker, they lost seventeen aircraft. Later in the day, carrier-based aircraft from Yorktown, Hornet, and Enterprise attacked the Japanese carriers, losing over 45 aircraft in the process. Ten of these losses came when VF-8s returning Hellcats ran out of fuel and had to ditch. As the battle went on, more planes crashed. Hornet’s VB-8 couldn’t locate the Japanese fleet on June 4th. Without enough gas to make it back to Hornet, they headed to Midway. Three of their planes had to ditch. [1]

And here you can see the early part of the air-sea rescue operation at Midway kick into gear.

Ensign Troy Guillory and his radioman-gunner lost their engine and had to ditch. Their position was radioed to Midway and a PBY Catalina picked them up. Ensigns T. J. Wood and Forrester Auman ran out of fuel just before they reached Midway. Auman was so close to making it, he ditched in Midway lagoon! A PT boat motored out to saved him and his radioman-gunner. [2]

VF-8s downed pilots had been able to radio their position before ditching, so Midway was able to quickly rescue eight of the ten lost pilots fairly quickly.

But then came the hard part: finding the lost aircrews, the ones who hadn’t been spotted by squadronmates or sent a distress call.

Sometimes these downed airmen were spotted by carrier-based planes flying routine patrols. During a June 8th routine patrol off the USS Hornet, VB-8 pilot Roy Gee spotted a flash of yellow bobbing on the ocean. [2] Looking closer, he could see a lone man in his life raft. He’d been alone in his tiny dinghy, baking under the Pacific sun for four days. Gee’s radio operator called sent a message back to the carrier. Midway-based rescuers responded to Gee’s report and saved the man. But the real champions of the search and rescue effort were the PBY Catalinas. Before the battle, the Catalina crews had flown endless missions looking for the Japanese fleet. Now, they were on a mission to save lives. For nearly two weeks after the battle, the ungainly flying boats of Patrol Wing 2 scoured the ocean, looking for downed airmen.

Most of the airmen saved at Midway owed their lives to the effort of the Catalinas. Commander Logan Ramsey, Midway’s senior naval aviator, personally organized and led the rescue work. For days after the fighting ended, Catalinas were pulling men to safety. Ensign George Gay, the lone survivor of the USS Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8), was picked up by a PBY Catalina off Midway.[3] One airman survived 13 days in an open raft before the PBYs got him. Another man made it 11 days before he was picked up. [4] You can see video of the relieved survivors coming back to Midway here (https://www.c-span.org/video/?306324-1/the-battle-midway).

However, Midway-style rescue operations with land-based planes and short-ranged PT boats had their obvious limitations. As the Allies went on the offensive, US carrier planes and USAAF bombers hit targets well out of reach of friendly land planes.

To save pilots downed in these raids, the Navy and Air developed remarkable air-sea rescue system. Beginning in early 1943, the Navy assigned aircraft specifically to the combat search and rescue mission. These aircraft would respond to distress calls and sightings made by other aircraft and ships. They’d also patrol on their own. When they spotted the downed crew, these flying boats would land and grab them. In an eight month period, just one PBY Catalina based on Guadalcanal managed to rescue 161 lost airmen.[5]

More on this later! The Air Force gets Catalinas. Andrew Higgins builds (another) boat. Dumbos take to the skies. The Truk Taxi service picks up more passengers than it can handle. A future president has a brush with death. Marc Mitscher leaves the lights on. And the Superforts learn to swim.

[1] http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/history-up-close/objects-of-history/list/

[2] http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2013/06/05/battle-of-midway-remembering-midway/

[3] https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/logs/CV/cv8-EnsGay.html

[4] https://www.c-span.org/video/?306324-1/the-battle-midway

[5] History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: The Struggle for Guadalcanal by Samuel Eliot Morison

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Bruce Gamble's three book series on the fighting for Rabaul has good information on the nature of air fighting in the Pacific. While the naval battles are fairly well known, the long-range battles that took place for years between Japanese and US bases involved hundreds of aircraft and many casualties.

Ditching in the Pacific was indeed a very hazardous business. In naval battles the odds were generally better: the flight paths were better known, the likelihood of downed planes was known, and planes tended to fly together. But still men were seen to climb into dingies, only to be lost forever. The extremely long range missions flown from New Guinea of north Queensland to attack places like Rabaul or Henderson Field were far more hazardous from this perspective. Planes often took off and simply disappeared, especially lone reconnaissance or weather observation aircraft. The chances of getting a Catalina patrol/rescue plane or submarine to a downed pilot before he was blown away, died of exposure or otherwise succumbed was small, even if the patrol could get to the correct place and find their man. Many of the men who ended up as prisoners on Rabaul were Allied pilots shot down near the islands, and often their survival was miraculous (and fellow aircrewmen did not survive after successfully abandoning the aircraft.

B-29s damaged over Japan were also often lost without trace, despite considerable efforts to put in place a rescue service and record the exact locations of downed aircraft.

For the Japanese, with limited search facilities and a different attitude to aircrew expendability, the situation was much worse.

Bruce Gamble: Target Rabaul; also, Fortress Rabaul.

Osamu Tagaya Mitsubishi Type 1 Rikko Units of World War II

Koji Takai and Henry Sakaida B-29 Hunters of the JAAF