B-47 Rocket-assisted take off!

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Early in the testing of that airplane...the gear stayed down the entire time...

Early jet engines didn't make a lot of power. They were good for power at altitude and at high speed, but at low speed, they really were anemic. JATO (and/or RATO...same thing...) was developed to enable a heavy jet to get airborne in a reasonable length of runway.
 
Back in the early 70's used to watch the station HU-16 Albatross do jato takeoffs on NAS Agana Guam, she would take off like a rocket but when they stop she would start settlng downward until those recipes could catch up to speed
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Witnessed one of these B47 takeoffs at Macdill in mid to late 50's as a young kid on vacation. Made a firm imprint on a boy's psyche! The initial power application was accompanied by huge amounts of black smoke from the wing engines (forget type) and then the bottles fired near the TO point. One other maybe interesting aspect of the aircraft operation - to hear the "old guys" tell it, you had to be waaay out in front of the airplane for power changes (application of power). Apparently you could get grey hair due to the spool up period and there was always discussion about whether the grey hair was a time function or a terror function!
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