RVLs et al:
Not a Boffin - you are welcome, and you are right on the money over spool up times and recovery power settings being critical.
Bringback - you'd be surprised at how limited bringback on some of the older USN jets was. Apart from the need to carry LOTS of fuel to the deck, especially at night, the stresses of deck landings also limited the size of stores some aircraft could bring back to the deck - I believe that the A-7 was a case in point.
The issue is that getting back to a deck the F-35C way is a very demanding manoeuvre, with some significant design drivers such as slow speed handling, max trap speeds and so on. Weight is a BIG issue for cat and trap operations as well as STOVL.
F-35B has quite excellent bringback for a STOVL aircraft and pretty darn good one for most types.
Regards
Engines