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Thank you! (L.P., I recollect you had a relative that was involved with Midway?)

First contact....a PBY Catalina sights the Japanese Midway invasion fleet.

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/08/31/cat-tales-the-story-of-world-war-iis-pby-flying-boat/

PBYs acted as advance patrols and picked up downed pilots and seamen. Excerpt:

"Particularly in the Pacific theater, air-sea rescue PBYs (called “Dumbos”) retrieved thousands of ditched pilots and shipwrecked seamen, often under fire and usually in seas that would have trashed a lesser boat.

One Dumbo landed three times to pick up downed bomber crews and eventually took off with 25 extra men aboard; for that mission, Navy Lt. Nathan Gordon became the only PBY pilot to be awarded a Medal of Honor.

Another Cat needed a three-mile takeoff run to lift a total of 63, including its own crew, and the pounding probably popped half the rivets in the hull. But the record goes to the Australian Catalina that carried 87 Dutch sailors — standing room only, thank you — after Japanese bombers mauled their freighter. With 15,000 pounds of passengers alone, to say nothing of the airplane’s fuel and crew weight, that put the RAAF PBY well over gross, but the Cat’s basic weight-and-balance rule was that if the payload hadn’t yet sunk the boat, it would somehow take off."

My father enlisted and served on a Navy PBY and happily (for me!), avoided by 2 weeks his squadron's redeployment from S.F. to a forward base in Okinawa. They were demobilized following the Japanese surrendered. I think he regretted having missed redeployment to S.Pacific, in having some part in the large events of history and the adventure of being in the Navy and flying around over the ocean in a far away place. (Not so much the loitering over the water in a slow moving under armored plane and being shot at part.)