I seem to recall that there were Sea Hurricanes launched from catapults mounted on merchant ships as early as 1941 when on the Murmansk run. In fact, if I remember correctly some of the later merchantmen were modified with a short flight deck to allow these Hurricats to land back on, rather than lose the aircraft after one flight as happened with the originals. I think these catapults may have been rocket powered.
It would not have suprised me that they had then taken this a step further and used cats on aircraft carriers.