"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote:

"Guy Alcala" wrote in message
. ..

From at least 1944 on, all American fighters were equipped for or with
catapult hooks, so they could be air-delivered to forward airfields by
CVEs.


I've never heard of that, do you have a reference?

snip

From Friedman's "Carrier Air Power," pp 98-9:

"Catapults also made possible the delivery of land-based fighters by escort
carriers; . . . .The first such delivery occurred during the North African
invasion [Guy: P-40Fs IIRR], when paratroopers captured an airfield, and the
techique was particularly common in the Pacific. Thus by the end of the war
all Mustangs and Thunderbolts assigned to the Pacific received their
(removable) catapult fittings on the assembly line. The United States
continued to use escort carriers for aircraft delivery postwar, and indeed
continued to experiment with catapult fittings for land jet fighters. However
by the early 1950s even light fighters required such powerful catapults that
existing transport carriers had to be reduced to carrying their aircraft
cocooned on deck, and all had their catapults removed in 1952."

Guy