Not 100%, but enough engine power for a 3.5 degree glideslope at roughly a 600-750 fpm descent rate and enough flight control movement to adjust for lineup. Well, thats a general look at it anyway.

back in the day with no ejection seats, you were ordered to ditch.

My father was coming in for a landing as a plane was launching.  Immediately after launching an engine caught fire.  The plane banked to circle back when the order was given to ditch along side.  My father landed, and as he rode the elevator down he could see the shocked faces of the deck crew watching the ditching






Pilot did not survive.

You can get on google earth and look at Orange Grove Auxillary field, or Kingsville Naval Air Station in South Texas and see the carrier setups.
I think NAS kingsville even has arrestor cables.

True but dont confuse it - they arent taking traps for training. Kingsville, like all Navy and most AF fields has arresting gear available for emergencies. And it has a lot more run out than carrier arresting gear cables. Field gear brings you gently, sort of, to a stop. Carrier, not so much.

I will try and answer this better.

On the LSO platform and in the tower there are these things called ARB's (aircraft recovery bulletins). The information inside covers all sorts of emergencies for each type of aircraft onboard. So, if I have an E-2C that went single engine, I open the ARB and find out the ideal glideslope, grossweight the E-2 needs to be at for landing, wind over the deck requirements and any other pertinent notes. The is no ARB for any aircraft being "dead stick".

If you have no engines, then you might have that little accessory windmill which drops down and provides hydraulic power for you to manipulate the planes control surfaces.

I would suspect that with dimished hydraulics, the plane wouldn't be as responsive and the controls would be really mushy.

And as you got lower and slower that little wind mill gadget spins even slower and produces even less hydraulic pressure, so there would be quite the lag time between a control input and the plane's response.  So just when it is most critical to have a responsive aircraft, it would be the least responsive/worst handling.

That is assuming that there isn't some auxiliary motor or APU spinning up the hydraulic pump, and that whatever caused the engine(s?)to shut down didn't already take out the hydraulic lines.

Ahh.  Ok.   My friend went through jet training at Kingsville.  I thought they did full traps there before he went to a carrier for a few months.
I think he is in Lemoore now.

My understanding is the F4 was designed simply to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that with enough power, even a brick can be made to fly.

If both engines are lost and the aviator cannot get one back then they will eject that is the only option.

Landing on a carrier requires a shallow angle of attack then when landing going full power incase the arresting wire is not caught.   The Captain does not want to risk the flight deck for one aircraft.

Rules aside anyone thonk it could happen with the net system?

It could be done, right plane, right situation.  I doubt a fighter would be anywhere close to the right plane.  However, to ocean is a much bigger target and probably not much different from a successful landing... Just add water

Just found this.  Appears it may have been a skyraider with a failure on approach.    My i potato wont let me read it properly

https://books.google.com/books?id=ewErTmZpDFAC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=dead+stick+aircraft+carrier&source=bl&ots=2OzX0bKNsK&sig=j7cDVy7LFnJHL4WgYEZ72jFNsrI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBmoVChMIyY-UgOLQxwIVxxc-Ch0RXQRY#v=onepage&q=dead%20stick%20aircraft%20carrier&f=false

4 April 1963.  VF-62, USS Shangri-La.



First (and probably only) Jet dead-stick landing on a Carrier.



F-8E with fuel transfer problem, lost all fuel in feed tank and flamed out while high and fast in the groove.  Caught the one wire.





http://www.amazon.com/Crusader-Gunfighters-Schiffer-Military-Aviation/dp/0887407668/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1440988587&sr=8-2&keywords=paul+Gillcrist

That poor guy has crashed into the deck so many times, I wonder why they still let him fly!

This.

Which is likely the basis of OP's question, even if he doesn't realize it.