Basil - you and your son might enjoy this story. Our Sikorsky S-39 CAP (Coastal Patrol) aircraft had quite a career.
Back in WW2, Eddie Edwards and Hugh Sharp flew this aircraft on many Coastal Patrol missions. Edwards, in an interview in 2006, remembered their 1942 rescue of First Lt. Henry Cross, whose aircraft had gone down off the coast of Delaware.
โI got the call that one of our planes was down, and Sharp asked me to go with him in our S-39,โ Edwards said. โWe had no trouble finding the crash site. We spotted a body, so we made an emergency landing and fished him out. He was alive, but we never found the other guy.โ
The rescue on July 21, 1942, required that Edwards and Sharp land their aircraft, a Sikorsky S-39 single-engine amphibian piloted by Sharp, in 8- to 10-foot-high swells, which crushed the left pontoon. They were able to get the downed pilot into the S-39, but the damaged aircraft could not take off. So, to get back to Base 2, Edwards left the cockpit and climbed out onto the right wing. Using his weight to level the aircraft and keep it from capsizing, he remained on the wing clutching the struts all through the night and into the next day, when a Coast Guard ship water-taxied the unflyable aircraft to shore.
Edwards and Sharp were the first civilians ever to receive the Air Medal. Here's a photo of the two receiving the award from President Roosevelt.