No. They are "hollywood" missions... If you want "historical" ReCons, download Ed Howard and Company's "SpyRon Mod", which is available on another site. Just use Google to search on that name, and you'll find it. It is only compatible with stock, and can be quite a lot of fun...
As for mods here on SubSim, lurker used an "invisible Target Ship" and re-did quite a few of the Recon missions, eliminating most of the "photo ships" thingies, replacing them with "photo beach" missions, which did happen. I don't know how "accurate" he got with them, but at least you're not assigned a suicide mission every other ReCon you go on... Osaka Bay has enough issues just in RGG generated, and "overspawns", which is what you found there with that DD convention. It gets worse in there by 1944-45... It's like the whole pre-war IJN DD & DE roster is there...
- that's in the "stock" game. Some mods fix it, others don't.