Carriers use catapults to launch aircraft off the deck and into the sky, but the technology behind that isn't what you might expect. There's no counterweight system flinging fighters into the sky ...

Not all aircraft carriers launch planes the same way. Some use steam or electromagnetic catapults to "fling" aircraft into the air. Others use a ski jump: a simple upward-curved ramp that lets ...

Catapults on aircraft carriers borrow this same basic mechanism, with force on one end pulling a cord to launch an object on the other end, but they look completely different, with only their ...

When these carriers were built, China still lacked the know-how to build a catapult system. Modern steam-powered catapults, introduced in the 1950s, were game-changers for the U.S. Navy.

Among the peculiar practices is launching a pair of boots off the flight deck of an aircraft carrier in a special ceremony known as a "boot shoot." What is a boot shoot? A "boot shoot" commemorates ...

The CATOBAR (Catapult-Assisted Take ... and horizontal stabilizers folding mechanism. This feature is required when operating from the scarce space on a carrier as it allows it to occupy less ...

Newport News Shipbuilding reached the catapult testing phase in construction of the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, the company announced Wednesday. Car-like structures, weighing up to 80,000 ...