Strictly speaking, no, because you don't have control over how the OS uses the launch image.
But what you could do is make a dummy/replacement view of the same.
Upon launch, let the first UIViewController
you load simply contain a UIImageView
of the same launch image. You may have to do a little work to make it look right in your particular situation, for the interface orientation, etc. But if all goes right, when you load up this ViewController, you shouldn't notice a difference or any sort of transition between it and the actual launch instance -- visually it's all the same, tho technically it isn't.
Then you could have this view/image fade out. Essentially this gets the effect you want.