Can you see the man directly in front of the airplane with something in his hand.  This is a bar which hooks to the airplane and to the deck holding the plane securely at the beginning of the cat..  You can see the slots for the catapult in the white area on the deck.  I sure hope that I have this right!  In the middle of this bar is a torque link that is made to break when and only when the catapult and the aircraft thrust together are within the designed parameters.  This is to eliminate the infamous, "Cold Cat Shot," where the catapult doesn't have enough power to get the airplane into the air.  If the metal torque link doesn't break the pilot and plane are saved.

If anyone has a photo and comments about this torque link, please send me e-mail at the bottom of this page.  If your info is well done we can put it on a new page.

My name is Stephen Mitulinski. I am a retired Aviation Boatswains Mate Equiptman. The release link your talking about wasn't used on   the Tomcat. It was properly referred to as Multiple release element. The f-14 was the first aircraft to use this type of unit. Previous aircraft  used tension bars. These were designed and manufactured to fit in only one type aircraft. That way you couldn't put the wrong bar in the  wrong plane. My E-mail address is smitulinski@hotmail.com