Explosives: Safety Procedures for Handling Rocket Motors (JATO) 1963 USAF Training Film TF-5492 (Patreon)

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Originally a public domain film from the US Air Force, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

JATO (acronym for jet-assisted take-off), is a type of assisted take-off for helping overloaded aircraft into the air by providing additional thrust in the form of small rockets. The term JATO is used interchangeably with the (more specific) term RATO, for rocket-assisted take-off (or, in RAF parlance, RATOG, for rocket-assisted take-off gear)...

Early experiments using rockets to boost gliders into the air were conducted in Germany in the 1920s (Lippisch Ente), and later both the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe introduced such systems in World War II...

After World War II JATO was often used to overcome the poor thrust of early jet engines at low speeds or for assisting heavily loaded aircraft to take off. For example, the propeller engined Avro Shackleton, when heavily laden with fuel for long maritime surveillance flights, relied on Armstrong Siddeley Viper turbojets for takeoff.

The world's first jet airliner, the de Havilland DH 106 Comet, included a design provision to carry two hydrogen peroxide-powered de Havilland Sprite booster rockets intended to be installed for "hot and high" conditions from airports such as Khartoum and Nairobi. These were tested on thirty flights, but the de Havilland Ghost jet engines alone were considered powerful enough and some airlines concluded that rocket motors were impractical. Nevertheless, Sprite fittings were retained on production Comet 1s but were rendered unnecessary with subsequent engine upgrades.

In the late 1950s, zero-length launch experimental programs for launching fighter aircraft were carried out by the United States Air Force, the German Bundeswehr's Luftwaffe and the Soviet VVS using high-thrust, short-burn duration booster designs of similar appearance and function. The USAF used a modified Republic F-84, designated EF-84G, which used the MGM-1 Matador cruise missile's Aerojet General-designed, 240 kN (26 short ton) thrust-level solid fuel booster of two second thrust duration. The Soviet VVS used a modified MiG-19 fighter, designated SM-30, launched from a special launcher, and using a nearly identical solid-fueled rocket booster design to that of the EF-84G, but of a much more powerful, 600 kN (64 short ton) thrust level. The F-100 and F-104 were also used for zero-length launch experiments, with similarly powerful drop-away booster units to the Soviets' SM-30 experiments.

Also in the 1950s the JATO Junior was an attempt by Aerojet Engineering to introduce smaller JATO units to small commercial aircraft, but was blocked by the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics. Aerojet claimed that the smaller JATO bottle, delivering 250 pounds of thrust for 12 seconds could help a light private plane, that normally requires almost 900 feet of runway to clear a 50-foot-high obstacle, could do the same with 300 feet of runway with a JATO Jr unit.

The Boeing 727 had provision for Aerojet JATO assist for use in "hot and high" conditions, particularly at Mexico City and La Paz. A JATO option was available for the Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner to increase take-off weight while maintaining one-engine inoperative climb requirements.

In late 1980 the United States military operation plan Operation Credible Sport was intended to rescue hostages held by Iran using C-130 cargo planes modified with rocket engines to enable a very short take off and landing. The plan was canceled after an accident occurred during a test landing when the forward-facing JATO units designed to slow the aircraft fired before the downward-facing units (designed to cushion the landing) did, causing the aircraft to crash-land.

JATO became largely unnecessary as the take-off thrust of jet engines improved and is now rarely used even when operating heavily laden from short runways or in "hot and high" conditions. It is occasionally used in exceptional circumstances, on specially equipped, mostly military, aircraft...