10/31/2009. Blue Angels support ship, affectionately known as Fat Albert Airlines, climbs at a 45° angle, assisted by the power of eight solid-fuel rocket bottles.

This form of additional power, known as RATO (Rocket Assisted Take Off) is defined in a dictionary as: "A take off in which a rocket or rockets, commonly of the solid-fuel type, are used to provide additional thrust."

Erroneously this additional power is often (even by the Blue Angels website) referred to JATO (Jet-Assisted Take Off). JATO is defined as: "A take off utilizing an auxiliary jet-producing unit or units, for additional thrust."

This RATO-JATO mix-up goes back to the 1930s as explained at the NASA history website:
"In America, significant team research began in 1936 at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, or GALCIT. In 1939, this group received the first federal funding for rocket research, achieving special success in rockets to assist aircraft take off. The project was known as JATO, for jet-assisted take off, since the word "rocket" still carried negative overtones in many bureaucratic circles."