Wild Bill Kelso
Charter Member 2011
They definitely didn't. They don't even have a dedicated aircraft carrier.I know the Germans probably DIDN'T use the F-104 in a carrier based role, but I'm not real sure at this point.
And though I've seen images of German Navy's Hawker Sea Hawks on carrier decks during NATO exercises, I'm quite confident no one ever tried to operate this manned missile from a carrier - may it be launching or ramming it down!
The Navy's F-104Gs were land based but fitted with a tailhook for emergency landings on arrestor-cable equipped runways.
But who needs slingshots anyway?
Rocketdyne's ZELL device (=Zero-Length-Launch) would have shot it from the deck for sure!
I took this pic some years ago at the Luftwaffen-Museum at Berlin-Gatow:
![ZELL.jpg](http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt112/wildbillkelso_berlin/Starfighter/ZELL.jpg)
Cheers,
Markus.