Back in the 1950s when we feared swarms of Soviet bombers coming over the horizon, someone noticed that jet fighter needed runways and runways make dandy targets. In order to prevent our planes from being caught on the ground, someone came up with the idea of the Zero Length Launch System (ZEL). Basically, you stick a big rocket motor under the plane's tail and launch it like a missile. The plane would then go engage the enemy. Finding a landing place was up to the pilot or he could use his ejection seat if it came to that. One idea that didn't work too well was to have the plane belly land on a rubber mat.

Interestingly enough to airplane geeks, the system worked quite well. Several different types of fighters (up to and including the F-104) were tested using the system and all were successful. I saw some video recently on the Discovery Wings channel showing the Soviets testing the same idea on one of their MiG designs, a MiG-19 if memory serves.

The launch actually wasn't all that violent, according to the pilots. The idea was eventually dropped when ICBMs came along and we discovered the Soviets had few bombers capable of reaching the US.