I've dug out another book of mine that discusses this incident. It is called "Up In Harms Way" by Cmdr R M Crosley, DSC & Bar RN
Mike Crosley flew Seafires off Japan during the war and then went to the ETPS and after failing to gain a permanant commission joined Shorts as a test pilot. 3 years later he rejoined the Navy and after time in Korea became a Tutor at ETPS. During this period he was involved with the development flying of the Buccaneer and was on the bridge of the Hermes when the incident happened. His last flying appointment was as CO of the Navel Test Squadron at Boscombe Down where invented the "hands-off" launch technique for the Buccaneer. In his time at Shorts he also invented the heads up display while testing flying boats.
He say's Ossie's a/c reared up, dropped its port wing in a stall and hit the water within 10 seconds of its take off. It had only its airbrakes showing as it passed down the port side, about a 100 yards distant. It stayed like this for about a minute and then slowley dipped forward and disappeared below the surface.
According to the instrument recording the pilot had applied full available nose down elevator one-eighth of a second after leaving the cat'. Was the end speed dangerously low? (We all knew that the acceleration of the Narner off the end of the cat' had been as low as half a knot/sec on some occasions.) Was BLC failure the cause? Was it because the tail down launch posture too nose-up for the airflow to fully establish itself?
Cmdr Crosley went to the enquiry which concluded that Ossie had pulled back on the stick, promoting a pitch up and stall. The reason why he could not correct the pitch up was through lack of available nose down elevator power to correct the pitch up.
At the preliminary meeting on board Mike Crosley said he thought a 3 deg pitch up had occured on the cat due to the tail skid collapsing. It was the exciting cause of the pitch up which was not Ossie induced as he(Crosley) had seen no up elevator during the launch. The inertia from this 3 deg/sec pitch up could not have been stopped by Ossie as the elevator nose down authority avail to the pilot was almost nil. This being because the max nose down elevator angle was only 2 degs, insufficient angle at that speed.
It was also discovered that the wrong grease had been used in the wing fold bolts and that had caused a misalignment in the port rear wing fold bolt, possibly leading to a partial loss of BLC on that side contributing to the L wing stall.
When the a/c was recovered from 50' of water it was found that the canopy had been jettisoned underwater, and Ossie was out of the cockpit but with his foot firmly jammed by the observers ejector seat after it had been fired accidentally.
The observer had also been trying to escape at the same time but, at the time his seat fired, the a/c had already turned over onto its back, thus driving downwards and injuring both of them.
A sad story in a very interesting book published by Airlife in 1995.
ISBN 1 85310 555 4