Speaking of carrier landings by 4 motored beasts;
No way the P-3 did it, especially in 1944! The P2V wasn't even around yet. Anyone, other posters put that one to rest.
Now, the C-130 actually did conduct carrier trials. Check out this link -
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0097.shtml
The idea was to be able to move more Pax and cargo than the COD (C-1 and C-2 were both less than ideal for moving large numbers of people and a lot of cargo necessitating a lot of roundtrips). See the site for more details. It was done and more than once. Pilot (Flatley) got a DFC.
Fast forward to 1985 and USS America operating in Vestfjord, Norway during NATO Ocean Safari exercise while responding real world Soviet response to a carrier so close to the motherland. During this precedent-setting operation inside the fjord (high walls hid the carrier from Soviet Bear D radar and, supposedly, the fjord could be sealed from any sub activity by the bad guys), the Brits and Euro press were saying carriers couldn't hide nor survive the massive Soviet air and sub threat. So this was a tense exercise with loads of VIPs and press wanting to come out and see if the carrier could in fact survive. So far, the translant and ops North of UK has been a stunning success with Soviets and NATO unable to find the carrier due to aggressive deception campaign and solid cloud cover. SECNAV (Lehman) and 2nd Fleet (Mustin) were both aboard so there were heavies everywhere and even more trying to come aboard once the carrier revealed her location.
Ashore in Olso, Norway a naval reserve captain sent over to coordinate movement of all VIPs and press was aware of the C-130 landings (only enough to know it happened and as it turned out, apparently he did not know it was only a test event) and he figured he could greatly expedite the transfer of folks waiting to get out to the carrier by making one trip in a C-130 (that brought many of the folks and some material to Olso) vice mulitple trips in the C-2 spread out through the day in order to conform the the cyclic ops of the carrier. He was the senior guy ashore and his reservists set about to getting the passengers manifested and cargo moving to the C-130. The C-130 crew was unaware of his plan initially (obviously) and the whole affair was only stopped when a liaison officer (a LT who was my roommate) from the air wing arrived ashore on the first COD and stumbled on "the plan". He had to argue with the Captain who was adamant that C-130s had and still did land on carriers (true, but only in one test). It was simple enough to clear up by checking with the C-130 crew who had not intention of landing on this or any other carrier.
After telling us this story upon his return, my roommate said the captain was a furniture store owner in regular life and was just trying be efficient. After slowly realizing he had figured wrong, it was more of trying to not look like a baffoon in front of is command and VIPs who were already snickering.
A word to you fledgling aviators, the reservists get a medal after 10 years (IIRC) that is yellow and blue. We jokingly referred to it as a warning label as a reservist with ten years or more could be an O-4, 5 or 6 and outrank most active duty types, but in terms of actual active time (2 weeks a year plus weekends equals about 6 weeks a year) so a ten year reservist may only have a little over a year of active duty (of course that doesn't include any active duty served before going into the reserves) so you has a JG might have a lot more active duty time than an O-5. At any rate, I have served with many reservists who were stellar folks so don't take this the wrong way (especially if you are USNR). But, remember, look for and heed the warning label!! (tongue in cheek)
OK, back to original post - P-3s on carriers, never! C-130, yes, multiple times in one test with nothing else on flight deck. Now, for the real oddball carrier landing. During Viet Nam, a U-2 demonstrated ability to land on a carrier. Hook magazine carried some stunning color shots (pre-photoshop). Here's a link with a good color shot (
http://www.afa.org/magazine/feb2001/0201spyplane.asp). Happy New Year! HJ