"Gene S. Park" wrote:
You may find that it was the Germans who developed rocket assisted take
off
especially when it meant getting a fully loaded Me 321s and 323s in the
air.
The 6 Gnome-Rhone engines were barely capable of getting the Me 323
aloft.
The earlier glider version was given rocket assist to help the tow plane
get
it into the air.
All of this was taking place about 1941 and onward during the war. It may
be
assumed that this was another piece of German technology picked by US Army
in 1945.
Probably, but I don't think we did anything more than experiment with it.
The Germans developed the first rocket-powered airplanes in 1929.
They were commercially-available gliders with black-powder rockets
for propulsion. See
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclo.../Opel-RAK.html
for details.
--Bill Thompson