Warbird Information Exchange

The pic of the P2V making a RATO takeoff is the Truculent Turtle on the start of the famous longest flight for a piston engined aircraft, Perth, Australia to Columbus,Ohio, a record setting 11,236 miles. It was packed with fuel in every nook and cranny that fuel could be carried, so heavy she needed RATO to get off the ground
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_P ... _Turtle.22

Man, I can't help but wonder how pilots liked flying with those things? Wonder if it's as fun as it looks at first glance, or ends up being worrisome in some way or another in practice?

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Cheers,
Kurt Maurer
League City, Texas

PIC, Ford 6600 pulling Rhino batwing up and down the runway

The Mariner with the liquid fueled rockets would scare the pants off of me. Liquid fueled rockets have a lot of failure points, and rockets often fail in pretty nasty ways.

No such thing as a safe rocket.

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Cheers,
Kurt Maurer
League City, Texas

PIC, Ford 6600 pulling Rhino batwing up and down the runway

Curtiss SOC maybe?


Millionmonkeytheater.com lists this plane as "6/28/1949: Written off at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH." Should the year on this shot be 1948?

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All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
Pilot: "Flap switch works hard in down position."
Mechanic: "Flap switch checked OK. Pilot needs more P.T." - Flight report, TB-17G 42-102875 (Hobbs AAF)

The U.S. NAVY'S Blue Angels stopped doing jato / rato with it's c- 130 FAT Albert a few years ago, because they flat out ran out of the bottles that were all 50's vintage. they were only used for show anyway.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

I had a friend who was a Korean War fighter pilot and he use to tell stories how they would have to bulldoze a path through all the JATO bottles at the end of the runways that were dropped by heavily loaded F-84s.

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Cheers!

Lance Jones

J2F Duck

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Matt Gunsch, A&P, IA, Warbird maint and restorations
Jack, You have Debauched my sloth !!!!!!
We tried voting with the Ballot box, When do we start voting from the Ammo box, and am I allowed only one vote ?
Check out the Ercoupe Discussion Group on facebook

More JATO joy ...



A PBM Mariner makes a Jet Assisted Take Off from an unidentified body of water

















USCG UF-1 Albatross pictured making a jet assisted take off (JATO) at Naval Station Kodiak, Alaska.


Beech UC-45F Rocket-Assisted Take-Off (RATO). (U.S. Air Force photo)

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“With bottomless pockets...anything is possible”

Pop was flying B-47's during the Cuban Missile Crisis out of Forbes and JATO's were common.

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"There are old pilots and bold pilots but few old, bold pilots."

Another very interesting thread. Thanks, Mark. One question concerning the system on the PB2Y. With something so simple, what could possibly go wrong? Have a Happy New Year. I'm looking forward to more of your posts in 2015.

That's a SOC Seagull behind the Wildcat. They had the ability to use land gear and occasionally some carriers had one as a hack and took off and landed on the carriers. This probably happened more often during the early years of the war or before.

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Shop the Airplane Bunker At
www.warbirdbunker.com

Spectacular photos!

Seeing the system on the Mariner and other large flying boats is very exciting!

Thats the JATO being used for real I think ?, 401st BG machine after an emergency landing, normally at RAF Deenethorpe, repaired and on its way (matting under the main wheels), too short a normal take off run so the JATO used, as well as excess weight striped out, no guns.

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Martin
Wide open & turning left.

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Daviemax
Researcher of Post-War B-17 History
Maintains database of B-17s used from 46- on.