Got any link or citation for the RAF flying boat RATO trials? Sounds like there's a good story there to be shared.
"The War in the Air, The Royal Air Force in World War II" edited by Gavin Lyall. It's a little anthology of journal entries, letters, memos, telegrams, official or personal, some of them recounting the first combat experience against FW190s, and some recounting other little things (like civilian suggestions on how to help win the war, those suggestions calld "Bright Ideas Mk.I" "Mk.II" etc, some funny like: Take cat up in night fighter at night. Shoot guns where cat is looking.)
It's heavily worn (I've read and re-read this book for over 10 years and got it used to boot) so I can't list a SSBN or anything like that. Doesn't seem to have it inside the flap. I can make out "Ballantine Books" though.
I did about 15 minutes of browsing to find the incident. While I do recall seaplanes being tested with RATOs, this particular incident was of a Short Stirling.
One day we were delighted to have on the station a Whitley Bomber with rocket-assisted take-off. In this case, this consisted of a barrel under each wing containing some twenty-four rockets. We all tried it and the sensation was most impressive. Either one could climb at a fantastic gradient or accelerate to much more than the maximum cruising speed of the aeroplane. In eithe rcase, one fell back with a sickening finality to normal routine when the rockets were spent. As we put in a fair amount of practice on the Whitley, the RAE Farnborough thought they would like the Boscombe Down view of the much more formidable installation on a Short Stirling four-engined bomber. So this aircraft was duly flown over to us. Our chief engineer, Fred Rowarth, of Royal Aero Club handicapping fame, was suspicious of the installation from the start and made it quite clear that it was an RAE affair even though we were flying the aircraft. How right he was!
The system of rocket firing was more complicated than on the Whitley, but possibly more ingenious. As the throttles were opened for take-off, the rockets were fired progressively by means of a rheostat. Squadron-Leader Huxtable was the pilot selected for this job and he was a very fine sound man. Some months before he had survived a fantastic crash in an Albemarle which dived into the ground and blew up, hurling the crew all over the countryside. Luckily they all survived.
When the Stirling was ready, an impressive gathering of imptoratn visitors arrive don the aerodrome, including a general, a cabinet minister, and several very senior RAF officers. Huxtable taxied the great aeroplane out and slowly turned into the wind. The brass-hats watched in silence. The Stirling advanced slowly. It approached the rocket-firing stage then there was quite hte loudest, longest and most satisfactory explosion yet heard on the Salisbury Plain. The scene immediately around the Stirling was confused due to smoke, flames, and spent pieces of rockets. When all cleared away, we saw the aeroplane. It had come to a rest, one undercarriage partially collapsed, engines pointing in all directions, three propellers missing, and bits of blade here and there, but no one was hurt. At quarter throttle all the rockets had gone off at once, applying an acceleration which the Stirling's desigher had never even dreamed of.
- Wing-Commander H. P. Powell AFC ARAES
It's a great read if you can find a copy. Even has some photos in the center (one of those older books where they put all the color glossy pages in the center and the white pulp pages either side).
EDIT: removed BOLD to make it easier to read.
