Aboard North Carolina, Vought OS2U-3 Kingfisher aircraft were used for spotting gunfire, patrolling for enemy submarines, rescuing airmen, towing targets for anti-aircraft batteries, dropping messages to ships at sea, flying mail runs to ports, and making flights for radar calibration. These two-man planes, crewed by a pilot and radioman, carried guns, bombs, or depth charges and emergency gear including a life raft, rations, water, a folding carbine, paddles, and a rubberized cover. The battleship’s restored Kingfisher originated with a plane that crashed on Calvert Island, Canada, on August 20, 1942, after fog separated a formation en route to the Aleutian Islands; Ensign Mac J. Roebuck and gunner AMM1/c Stanley Goddard survived unhurt, reached the coast, and were rescued, while the plane was left behind after brief salvage. Canadian authorities recovered it in 1963 and sent it to the Air Museum in Calgary, after which the wreckage was turned over to North Carolina for restoration. At the battleship’s request, Vought Aeronautics undertook the work, and in 1970 the plane was shipped to Dallas, Texas, where the Quarter-Century Club of retired Vought workers restored it; after a year of work, the OS2U-3 Kingfisher was placed aboard the battleship and dedicated on June 25, 1971. Crew recollections and wartime reports convey the plane’s hazardous service, including low, slow spotting flights over Iwo Jima in February 1945, dangers posed by fueled and bomb-loaded catapult planes during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on August 24, 1942, and the punishing force of catapult launches. North Carolina initially carried three OS2U-2 Kingfisher planes, but that number fell to two after 20mm guns and 40mm gun mounts were added on the fantail.