80 years ago this week. 9 November 1944. Official wartime caption: “Jet-Propelled Take-off for Mariner, South Pacific – As the massive, bi-motored Martin mariner rises into the air, streams of smoke are ejected from the rockets situated under the wings. Jet propulsion is being more and more widely used to assist in speedy take-offs for more cumbersome planes. This picture was taken at a Pacific base by the new power-driven, portable K-25 camera.”
Official US Navy photo via the James Allison Collection, MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History
Keep in mind just the immense size of the PBM Mariner: 118-foot wingspan, 79 feet in length, 27 feet in height, and 25 tons in weight. Only one is left in the U.S., BuNo. 122071, located at the Pima Air & Space Museum.
I was able to take a peek at her last year and she is just… gigantic.
About the closest thing I can equivalate the above JATO shot to is seeing “Fat Albert,” the USMC KC-130 support Hercules attached to the Blue Angles, doing its dramatic JATO-STO maneuver, in which the 70-ton aircraft hops 500 feet up in about three seconds.