I scanned this photograph at the National Archives 14 years ago:
The caption:
This 6 April 1955 photo was from the same qualification period and illustrates the defense in depth of the crew and aircraft forward of the landing area.
The Cougar is being pulled to a stop immediately before the Davis barrier by the next to the last arresting cable. The much taller webbing is the barricade. It has just passed over one of the standard propeller-plane barriers that is lying flat on the deck. For a primer on barrier/barricade, see https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2022/10/barricade-and-barriers-example.html
This last minute wave off is another illustration of the landing area:
The mystery was that the webbing in front of 217's nose was clearly from the barricade (also note the damage to its right inlet from a vertical strap on the barricade) but the damage on the top of the nose and windscreen was not representative of either a Davis barrier or barricade encounter. This is an example of an F9F-6 going that far up the deck (note that it has engaged a Davis barrier and for some reason the hook has spit out the arresting cable, possibly because the pilot was too quick to raise it to the stinger position):
It was unlikely that the damage had resulted from a standard barrier been incorrectly raised for the landing: that would have required a nose landing gear collapse and the damage would have been far more extensive (e.g. the canopy and the pilot's head would probably have been removed), which is why the Davis barrier was created for carrier-based airplanes with nose landing gears:
The likely answer became apparent when Peter Greengrass recently stated that F9F-6 BuNo 128266 was also involved in the incident. My guess is that it had just landed and was being taxiing forward but hadn't gotten far enough ahead of the barricade when LTJG Genter needed it, so he rammed it from behind.
