Bill McMann was killed because he didn't eject.  There were twenty or so pilots in a squadron at El Toro who had to carrier qualify so they could go overseas for thirteen months.  They had two weeks to get it done.  Ken was the LSO who was qualifying them.  Landing Signal Officer.

He would wave them aboard, or wave them off.  This was before carriers started using mirrors to do that.  The LSO had Glo-paddles that the pilot could see from far off.  The motion and position of the paddles told you what to do--if you were too high, or got a wave off for being too low.  Or the deck was pitching up instead of going down.  The LSO had to have landed every plane that the Marines and Navy flew onto a carrier himself, before he could be qualified to wave someone else aboard.  That's a lot of planes. 

Ken had been an LSO for years.  Ever since Korea.  There were only three of them in the MC at the time, so they got a lot of practice.  Ken had also spent three years teaching cadets how to get aboard without killing themselves so they could qualify to receive their wings.  Stage 10 of aviation training.  Carrier quals. 

In that two weeks of trying to get carrier qualified, before they went overseas, four planes were destroyed.  One pilot broke his back on landing.  Deck hands tore two planes trying to get them down the elevator, and Bill McMann was killed.  He came in on a rising deck against signals from the LSO, caught his hook on the end of the carrier and pulled it out clear up into the fuel reservoir.  He added power with Ken yelling "Eject, eject,"  which he didn't.  He probably thought he could bring it around for another pass.  Planes quit flying when they run out of JP fuel.  They called the bay Skyray Bay.  I've forgotten how many Skyray planes ended up there.

When I remember all the friends that were killed, my heart hurts.  Where do such men come from?