Written off aircraft or who is rescuing crashed pilots?

[Subchaser]

I’ve notice this long time ago, when there were no patches released yet, and now with 2.30 this happens more often than with any of previous patches.

Fresh example with carrier borne pilots: air combat TF launched attack vs. enemy bombardment TF, during reaction phase 8 SBD were shot down and 43 damaged by flak. Combat summary indicated 13 SBD total lost that turn, all shot down by flak. I’ve checked air groups list and I noticed that only 10 SBD pilots were lost during that attack. All remaining pilots had several missions flown and there were none with 0 missions, this means that no new pilots arrived as reinforcements, this is impossible anyway cause TF was at sea all the time. So, what had happened to those 3 pilots? They had landed on water near their carriers and were rescued, or managed to land on carriers but their SBDs were in unrepairable conditions, were written off and listed as losses to Flak. If there is chance of survival of pilots whose planes are shot down, how high is it? Do they bail out or make crash landings?

If this subject was already discussed, can someone give me the link to that thread, I can’t find it.

[denisonh]

I believe that pilots can be rescued, and can survive operational losses as well.

Pilots can also bail out and get captured as well.

[The Gnome]

I always looked at it as the pilot made it back to the ship but the aircraft was so badly damaged it was shoved over the side. I'm not sure if that was intentionally modelled or not but it seems reasonable.