flying 262s again...

[Cornelius Quintus]

Does he indeed take off with a rocket up his backside?
Or does he use another plane to get him in the air?

Ave Robert,

the latter. The photograph in the middle shows a wire cable at the front.

So he's 'towed' by a motor-plane or hooked on to a motor winch, placed at the opposite end of the airfield. That's how we were used to start with our gliders - and the experimental plane looks like a glider to me (as the original also was constructed for motorless flight, except a booster rocket just for take off and reach it's operating flight level.)

Anyway, the wire cable will be released by a kind of lever in the cockpit and either carried away by the motor-plane or rolled in by a winch. If a small parachute could also be seen on a photo, it would indicate starting by a winch (a parachute secures that the end of the long cable will fall down with lower speed and give enough resistance to the winch to roll the cable in without raveling the cable. A motor-plane would just drop off the 'tow rope' before landing).