Although designed in the mid-1930s and in squadron service several years prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, Consolidated's PBY Catalina proved its soundness in combat throughout the four years that the war raged across the Pacific in World War 2. Deadly in its primary role as a submarine hunter, the PBY was the scourge of the Imperial Japanese Navy's submarine force. Its amphibious traits also made the aircraft well suited to air-sea rescue, and thousands of Allied airman were plucked from a watery grave by PBY crews. Several thousand PBYs had been built by VJ-Day, and a vast percentage of these aircraft served with US Navy patrol squadrons in the Pacific.