Living with an LSO, I felt like my education of landing on a carrier was almost like being a Naval cadet.  Minus the actual experience.  I heard it all.  Over and over.  From multiple pilots.  All the time for years and years.  What went wrong, what went right, what ended up in an accident.  Accidents were continual.  This was in the 1950's at the beginning of carrier capabilities. They killed a lot of pilots.  Pilots were cheap.  Planes were expensive.

When you were trying to come aboard, the LSO gave you signals with paddles.  Too high; too low; too fast; too slow.  The pilot is trying to hit the carrier deck at an exact point. On a dime.  He's done it a zillion times on a runway, but this is different.  The landing surface is moving in four directions.  Up, down, side to side.  Rolling and pitching. It looks easy in the movies.  It isn't. 

Come in too low or slow and you'll catch your hook on the front of the carrier and rip out your fuel tanks, kill yourself and people working the deck.  Come in too fast and you'll break the wire you're trying to hook--and the cable will slither like a snake across the deck and dismember or kill someone. You have to follow the LSO's signals exactly because he controls the deck.  Stress on the pilot is nothing compared to stress on the LSO.  When Mad Dog trained Ken, he said, "You have the right personality to do this.  "Calm and confident."  He was.

There are three wires.  If your hook hits the deck in front of the first wire, it bounces--bolters--and hopefully hooks the second or third.  You have to come in full power because if you bolter all three wires, you have to have enough power, speed, to fly off the deck and try again.  In the training command, some of Ken's students would pass all nine stages, get to the tenth (carrier) and never make it.  Wash out.  Sometimes because they just couldn't do it.  Sometimes because they were scared to death and went back and landed on base.