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Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1945 The first landing of a jet on a carrier takes place on USS Wake Island when an FR-1 Fireball touches down.

On 6 November 1945, a Fireball of VF-41 became the first aircraft to land under jet power on an aircraft carrier, albeit unintentionally. After the radial engine of an FR-1 failed on final approach to the escort carrier Wake Island, the pilot, Ensign J. C. West, managed to start the jet engine and land, barely catching the last arrestor wire before hitting the ship's crash barrier. The squadron was attempting to qualify its pilots for carrier operations during this time, but only 14 of its 22 pilots made the six required takeoffs and landings. (a 33% failure rate!) A number of accidents occurred when the nose gear failed on landing, but the pilots were at least partly responsible as they were slamming the nose gear onto the deck after landing on the main gear.

Quite the fortuitous misfortune. this was a very baaaad airplane; structurally weak, mis-designed (center of gravity issues with the wing-ducted internal jet engine) and it killed a lot of pilots! <FR-1 Fireball...Too much stuff in too little out-of-date concepts

...gear problems persisted and cut the cruise short. Ryan installed a steel fork for the nosewheel, but inspections also revealed evidence of partial wing failures so the aircraft was limited to maneuvers not to exceed 5 Gs. VF-41 suffered three fatal accidents in 1946 before being redesignated as VF-1E on 15 November 1946. One Ensign collided with the target banner during gunnery practice and spun into the water. A few months later, the squadron commander was performing a barrel roll when his wing broke off (the plane in the photo) and he struck another Fireball, killing both pilots. VF-1E conducted carrier qualification in March 1947 aboard the escort carrier Badoeng Strait and only eight pilots successfully qualified, not least because the FR-1s were proving to be too fragile to endure repeated carrier landings. During one brief deployment in June aboard Rendova, one aircraft broke in two during a hard landing. Subsequent inspections of the squadron's aircraft showed signs of structural failure and all the Fireballs were withdrawn by 1 August 1947.

Good decision; making test pilots out of expensively trained carrier fighter pilots is unwi$e ..and bad for morale.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_FR_Fireball