Quote:
Originally Posted by horseback
Before the jet operations of the late forties-early fifties, catapult takeoffs were fairly rare (and I don't think that the escort carriers even had catapults). 'Cat' shots are kind of stressful on the old airframe, especially the sorts we had back in the day, so Air Group Commanders were not eager to add any additional risks to their pilots and aircraft. Jarring stuff loose is a lot less critical when you land, but banging and shaking your aircraft around on takeoff was rightly considered just asking for trouble.
cheers
horseback
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Not entirely. CVEs absolutely had deck catapults, same as the fleet carriers; deck catapult usage was much higher on the CVEs because of their lower top speed. With a max gross weight TBM, a short deck with planes spotted over half of it, and limited speed into the wind, the CVE TBMs lived and died off the cats.
Fleet carrier usage was low early in the war (less than 75 total for 41 and 42 according to
Carrier Airpower by Freidman), but was up towards 40% of all launches by the end of the war, especially as naval air assets increasingly began focusing on ground support with heavier ordnance loads.
The lighter F4Fs, SBDs, and even the F6Fs could reliably launch without them, but catapults were used frequently to carrier launch P-40s, P-47s, and even P-51s during major coastal assaults - I've seen footage of both Warhawks and Thunderbolts being cat-launched during Operation Torch in the Med.
I know for a fact that once F4Us began operating regularly off the fleet carriers later in the war and were commonly carrying 2+ tons of bombs plus a belly tank, cat shots were often used for the first planes spotted on the deck until enough room was clear for the rest to make running launches. Same for TBFs topped off with fuel, HVARs, and a full bomb bay.
EDIT: here's a Navy article from 1995 that mentions CVLs and CVEs relying heavily on deck catapults, and how Army fighters were commonly used off them for resupply deliveries:
http://www.history.navy.mil/download/ww2-36.pdf
Also - this page confirms what I suspected, all Casablanca CVEs (which were a huge portion of all produced US / RN CVEs) had a deck catapult:
http://www.ww2pacific.com/notecve.html
http://www.navsource.org/archives/03/009.htm indicates the Bogue class had a deck catapult as well; I'm not sure if they were standard or not, but the lead ship (CVE-9) had one, so I suspect they all did as it was carried on to the Casablanca class.