On Fri, 25 May 2007 10:24:47 GMT, "William R Thompson"
wrote:

"Gene S. Park" wrote:

You may find that it was the Germans who developed rocket assisted take
off especially when it meant getting a fully loaded Me 321s and 323s in the
air.

The Germans developed the first rocket-powered airplanes in 1929.
They were commercially-available gliders with black-powder rockets
for propulsion. See

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclo.../Opel-RAK.html

for details.

--Bill Thompson

About the same time, there were also some German rocket powered boat
experiments.

But hundreds of years before, the Chinese built kite like birds
powered by rockets. One Lord, often named as Wan Hu is recorded as
trying to launch himself with rockets with fatal results.

Cheers, Bob