Carrier landings, however, are the hardest aerial stunt there is. People die if they make one small mistake. And Navy pilots do them daily.
I’ve heard that the pilots themselves say, anyone who’s not a little scared before attempting to land on a carrier doesn’t know what he’s doing. :^) NASA’s use of experienced pilots was a great idea (from Eisenhower, btw) and some of the best were of navy background (Al Shepard, Jr, Jim Lovell, and cool headed Neil Armstrong; the Mercury 7 was made up of 2 naval, 2 marine, and 3 air force, one of the AF never flew his Mercury mission), but none of those NASA pilots in the first three programs was some kind of washout, they were all great. When they started going up in pairs, the assignments tended to mix up the service backgrounds, presumably deliberately (Buzz, AF, went on G 12 with Lovell, for instance, and went to the Moon with Neil).