[762X51]

Marine Lands Jet Vertically Without Nose Gear!!!

Holy Crap! says I. I've got to see this. Oh. It's a Harrier they are designed to land vertically. I was expecting to see an F18 settling tail first into some contraption rigged to catch it. An aircraft designed to land vertically and doing so isn't really that stupendous of a feat.

[Kartographer]

Easy to say when you aren’t in the pilot seat.

[DesertRhino]

“and doing so isn’t really that stupendous of a feat.”

Sounds like you might not have been alone in that cockpit.

It already has a rep as one of the most difficult machines in our inventory to master. Coming in vertically on the gear has a small margin of error. But hitting the deck a couple of feet, one side or the other, probably won’t cause any issue.
But settling it down -precisely- into a cradle, without the shock absorbing landing gear, on the moving deck of a ship really was kinda a stupendous feat. Good flying Marine.

[Spirochete]

I was expecting to see an F18 settling tail first into some contraption rigged to catch it.

That's what the headline sounds like. It made me think of the X-13 Vertijet.