tejek....""In the air, the hard-partying McCain had a knack for stalling out his planes in midflight"....
Bulls**t
factcheck.org
We have had numerous questions about this widely circulated claim. Some say McCain "lost" five planes, others that he "crashed" five planes. All offer this alleged "fact" as evidence that he was a bad pilot. All are incorrect.
McCain did lose two Navy aircraft while piloting them, both due to engine failure. A third was destroyed on the deck of the carrier USS Forrestal when a missile fired accidentally from another plane hit either the plane next to McCain's or, less likely, his own aircraft, triggering a disastrous fire that killed 134 sailors and nearly killed McCain. A fourth plane was lost when he was shot down over North Vietnam on a bombing mission over Hanoi. There's no evidence that any of the four destroyed planes were lost to pilot error.
A fifth alleged "crash" turns out to be a misinterpretation of a flight accident that did not result in the loss of the aircraft. McCain admitted to causing that incident through "daredevil clowning" but returned safely. More about that later.
"Superb Airmanship"
None of these incidents prevented McCain from winning regular promotions and being assigned additional flight duty. The Navy praised his "aggressiveness and skillful airmanship" when awarding him the Navy Commendation Medal for an attack Oct. 18, 1967, on a shipyard in Haiphong, North Vietnam, prior to his capture. The Navy also commended his "superb airmanship" in awarding him the Distinguished Flying Cross for a bombing attack on a Hanoi power plant Oct. 26, 1967. His plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile on that mission, but he "continued his bomb delivery pass and released his bombs over the target" before being forced to eject, according to the official citation.
The Navy has released and posted copies of McCain's several medal citations and commendations. We have not seen any similar release of official reports of his accidents, or of his fitness reports as a young officer. However, we do have accounts of the incidents both from McCain himself and from his biographer, Robert Timberg, a former White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, and now editor of the U.S. Naval Institute's magazine, Proceedings. Timberg's award-winning book, "The Nightingale's Song," tells the story of McCain and four members of his Naval Academy class who later rose to prominence. It was published in 1995. McCain's book "Faith of my Fathers" was published in 1999.
Two Crashes
First Crash, late 1959 or early 1960: This took place while McCain, a young, unmarried officer not long out of the Naval Academy, was in advanced flight training at Corpus Christi, Texas. Timberg and McCain both give the cause as engine failure.
McCain, 1999 (pp155-156): I crashed a plane in Corpus Christi Bay one Saturday morning. The engine quit while I was practicing landings. ... I barely managed to get the canopy open and swim to the surface. ... I took a few painkillers and hit the sack to rest my aching back for a few hours. ... I was out carousing, injured back and all, later that evening.
Timberg's account agrees. Neither man gives the exact date, but Navy records show McCain was assigned to Corpus Christi from September 1959 through May 1960. He was promoted from ensign to lieutenant (junior grade) on Dec. 4, 1959. It's not clear whether the crash was before or after that promotion, but either way it did not prevent him from being promoted to full lieutenant on June 1, 1962.
Second crash, December 1965: By this time Lt. McCain was stationed at Meridian, Mississippi, and was newly married to his first wife, Carol. McCain had flown to Philadelphia to attend an Army-Navy football game with his parents and was bringing back Christmas presents for the family in the baggage compartment of his plane. His jet engine quit over the Chesapeake Bay.
McCain, 1999 (p. 172): Somewhere between the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Norfolk, Virginia, as I was preparing to come in and refuel, my engine flamed out, and I had to eject at a thousand feet. The Christmas gifts were lost with my airplane.
Biographer Timberg gives additional details:
Timberg, 1995 (pp 95-96): [He] had just begun his descent over unpopulated tidal terrain when the engine died. "I've got a flame-out," he radioed. He went through the standard relight procedures three times. At one thousand feet, he ejected, landing on the deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees. ... The Navy classified it as a "routine ejection."
A little more than a year later McCain was promoted to lieutenant commander on Jan. 1, 1967.
The Forrestal Disaster, July 29, 1967
At the time of this incident Lt. Cdr. McCain already had flown several bombing missions over North Vietnam from the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. As he was in his A-4 Skyhawk, loaded with two, 1,000-pound bombs and waiting on the carrier deck for his turn to launch, a Zuni missile accidentally fired from another aircraft, swooshed across the carrier deck and struck either McCain's plane or one next to it.
That triggered a fire and a series of bomb and missile explosions that killed 134 sailors. McCain himself barely escaped alive. He quickly leaped from his plane into the pool of burning jet fuel that immediately surrounded him. About 90 seconds later he was blown 15 feet back when the first bomb “cooked off” and exploded, killing several nearby firefighters.
James M. Caiella has written a scholarly article about the disaster, which appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Foundation magazine, a publication of the National Naval Aviation Museum, located in Pensacola, Fla. Caiella, who is now associate editor of Proceedings and Naval History magazines, published by the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis, generously shared with us copies of some key documents which he obtained from the Navy under the Freedom of Information Act. They include a typed transcript of the sworn testimony that McCain gave less than two weeks after the disaster, on Aug. 5, 1967, and also a written statement he submitted prior to his testimony, describing the first moments of the disaster:
McCain, 1967 statement: I heard a loud explosion and immediate fire all around the airplane . . . Smoke and flame were around the cockpit so I unstrapped . . . and unplugged my oxygen hose, keeping my visor down. I looked to the aft of the airplane and saw nothing but flame and I could see burning fuel in front and around the airplane but it did not look too bad to the forward. I opened the canopy and walked out on the refueling probe and jumped from the end of it, landing just on the edge of the fire and rolled clear..
McCain said that he rushed to help another pilot who had gotten out of his plane and had jumped into the flames and rolled clear, but was still on fire.
McCain, 1967 statement: I started running over towards him and I was near a group of men with a fire hose. As I was about 10 feet from him the first bomb exploded and blew me back about 15 feet. I sat up and saw a lot of bodies near me (some who had been on the hose) and I ran and jumped over the starboard cat walk [under the flight deck].
That first bomb explosion was 90 seconds into the fire. Soon it ignited other bombs and other missiles. Later, on the hangar deck below the main flight deck, McCain said he and another officer, along with “a lot of fine enlisted men,” pushed several bomb carts overboard to keep them away from flaming fuel that was curling down from above. He later “noticed that I had a hole below my left knee with some metal in it, and two small shrapnel cuts in my thigh and shoulder.”
The Forrestal was badly damaged and put out of action for two years. A little more than a month after the disaster, McCain was flying missions from another carrier, the USS Oriskany. |
