These are flight deck ops. French style.
This cool video filmed with GoPro cameras, shows launches and recoveries aboard the 38,000-ton, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle.
The footage not only lets you observe blue water operations of French Navy aircraft from the privileged eye of flight deck operators, but also brings you inside the cockpit of a Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard (also shown firing an AS-30 missile) as well as aboard a Dassault Rafale M for a high-speed, ultra low-level flight.
As the footage shows, the French aircraft carrier uses the same kind of catapult of the American flattops, although the Super Étendards are launched with a wire attached to the bottom of the fuselage instead of a cat shuttle attached to the nose gear (which actually is the same way the F-4 Phantoms were launched from an aircraft carrier). That’s why, in the past French Rafale combat aircraft have operated from USS Truman and F/A-18E Super Hornet and C-2A COD (Carrier On Board Delivery) planes have operated from Charles De Gaulle demonstrating interoperability between allied navies.
