"john szalay" john.szalayatatt.net wrote in message...
"a425couple" wrote in
The Yorktown steams full astern to land a TBF Avenger over the bow,
July 1943. Though provision for over-the-bow landing was a design
requirement, it was rarely practiced and the bow arresting gear was
soon eliminated."

IIRC: same as with the hanger deck catapult , out the side..

Side??
OK, below is proof of that.
But I also was pretty sure that I've seen pictures (and some words)
of the early Essex having a catapult to launch straight out
the front of the hanger deck. ??

Meanwhile, as to side:
http://warships1discussionboards.yuk...s#.VMk1fSwb3nE
pictures, and
"The hanger deck catapult looked like a good idea on paper.
A third cat would allow for more aircraft to be launched, and
you could still launch an observation plane or fighter even if the
flight deck was unavailable, such as when aircraft were spotted
to the forward part of the flightdeck to allow planes to land aft.
But in practice it proved to be of little value: because it pointed
to the side it did not benefit from the wind over the deck adding
lift to the aircraft, so the hanger deck cat could not launch aircraft
that were as heavy as the deck cats could. In addition, problem
of not being able to launch planes when everything was spotted
forward was solved by the deck cats themselves, which needed
very little space to launch even a fully loaded aircraft. Enterprise
reported at the end of 1941 that she had only fired her hanger
cat three times in the entire year (for training, never out of need),
so the Captain asked to have it removed. The Navy agreed that
hanger cats were not worth the weight and they were removed
from all US carriers "