Atlantic City's initial flight was out only 15 minutes when it spotted its first torpedoed tanker and started coordinating rescue efforts. The presence of CAP raised tanker crew morale during the war and was even credited with convincing torpedoed tanker men to accept another assignment back at sea. A CAP crew first interrupted a sub attack on a flight out of Rehoboth Beach, saving a tanker off Cape May, New Jersey. Since radio calls for military bombers were often unproductive, unarmed CAP fliers dived in mock attacks to force subs to break and run.
Many CAP aviators earned membership in the ''Duck Club'' for their numerous engine failures and subsequent ditching at sea. Radio calls to CAP's communications network, if made in time on weak one-watt sets, brought CAP twin-engine Grumman Widgeon amphibians to the rescue. The first Air Medals of World War II presented in person by President Roosevelt went to CAP pilots Eddie Edwards and Hugh Sharp for one such rescue, which saved one of two crewmembers down in a bitterly cold wintertime ditching. Edwards had to perch on the Widgeon's wing to counterbalance the loss of the opposite pontoon, ripped away in the rescuers' landing. A half-frozen Edwards clung there for 11 hours as the unflyable Widgeon was water taxied all night to shore. 
 CAP planes got bombs and depth charges after a crew watched in vain as a grounded sub off Cape Canaveral, Florida, escaped before the military arrived. CAP Coastal Patrol flew 24 million miles,
 found 173 subs, attacked 57, hit 10 and sank two. By Presidential Executive Order, CAP became an auxiliary of the Army Air Forces on April 29, 1943. The military had resisted ''those country-club
 pilots'' and their ''toy planes,'' but 21 CAP Coastal Patrol bases from Maine to Texas had soon deterred close-in submarine operations. By August 31, 1943, it was time for Coastal Patrol to stand down. A German commander later confirmed that coastal U-boat operations were withdrawn ''because of
those damned little red and yellow airplanes.''

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