Posted on 07/21/2015 5:33:49 AM PDT by KeyLargo
The Day John McCain Got Shot Down
Did He Show the Right Stuff? By Zalin Grant
John McCain received mixed reviews from fellow pilots when he arrived on the USS Oriskany in 1967, a month before he was shot down and captured. Cal Swanson, commander of fighter squadron VF-162, was enthusiastic. Swanson thought McCain proved he had the right stuff by getting himself assigned to the Oriskany, an aircraft carrier sailing off the coast of North Vietnam in the South China Sea. The Oriskany had seen more combat and suffered heavier casualties than any ship in the Vietnam War. McCain’s own aircraft carrier, the USS Forrestal, had been put out of action by a horrific fire two months earlier.
After the Forrestal fire, McCain was assigned to Saigon as a navy PR aide. He was perfect for the job—handsome, charming, witty. He had met R.W. (Johnny) Apple, a well-known reporter for the New York Times, and Apple had smoothed his way in Saigon by introducing him to journalists and to the U.S. military and civilian command.
John McCain could have served out his tour flacking for the navy and having a lot of fun doing it—dining at Saigon’s French restaurants and hitting the bars full of pretty Vietnamese girls. But McCain wanted to get back into combat. He had completed only five missions before the Forrestal fire. Cal Swanson thought McCain’s attitude reflected well on his courage and patriotism.
McCain would not be joining VF-162, Swanson’s fighter squadron, however. McCain was not a fighter pilot, although in later years the media would perpetuate the mistaken belief that he was. Trained as an A-4 bomber pilot, he was assigned to attack squadron VA-163, which had an illustrious history.
(Excerpt) Read more at pythiapress.com ...
Snip:
"He barely passed flight school. And then he crashed two airplanes and damaged a third.
The first crash took place during advanced flight training at Corpus Christi, Texas. According to McCain, the engine stalled while he was practicing landings. The plane fell into the water of the bay just off the airfield and knocked him unconscious. McCain woke up and somehow managed to get out of the cockpit and escaped serious injury. Investigators reported that they started the recovered engine without any problem, and their report left open the possibility of pilot error.
The next accident took place in Spain while McCain was assigned to an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea. He tried to fly his propeller-driven A-1 fighter-bomber under a row of pylon-supported electric power lines. This was a “hotdogging” stunt by U.S. pilots in Europe that had caused outrage. McCain’s plane hit and damaged the lines so badly that thousands of people lost power.
“My daredevil clowning had cut off electricity to a great many Spanish homes,” McCain wrote later, “and created a small international incident.”
In 1965, McCain flew a navy airplane to Philadelphia to attend the Army-Navy football game. On the way back to his base in Norfolk, Virginia, the plane’s engine quit, he said, so he bailed out. The plane crashed and was destroyed.
In the U.S. Navy, for a pilot to crash one plane was pushing it. To crash two often resulted in an official investigation to determine if he should be taken off flight status. How McCain got away with crashing two airplanes and smashing power lines in Spain was a mystery, although other pilots thought it had to do with his family connections."
Snip:
"By his own admission, then, McCain failed to follow instructions in combat. He did not try to evade the missile. Moreover, the pilots who were flying near him, one of them with a handheld camera, said he was not hit by a SAM. He had flown too low and was brought down by a barrage of antiaircraft fire. Since a SAM exploded in a bright orange fireball visible for miles around, it was unlikely that they had called it wrong. And since official navy records listed John McCain as downed by AAA fire, they were puzzled by why he later insisted in his political campaigns that it was a SAM.
As other pilots saw it, John McCain, quite simply, had got himself shot down.
But McCain also made another error in the next four to six seconds after he was hit. He failed to use the proper procedure he had been taught for ejecting. As a result, he injured himself critically, breaking both arms and his right leg."
AVIATION PING
MCCAIN AND THE POW COVER-UP
http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/mccain-and-the-pow-cover-up/
John McCain: Privileged ‘War Hero’, Liar, Collaborator, Traitor
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/earlhopperinterview08feb08.shtml
Donald Trump V McCain: McCain EXPOSED By Vietnam Vets And Pow’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvvePpE8u1M&feature=youtu.be
Why Veterans Should Not Support John McCain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jg2bIwTJ_8
Vietnam Veterans Against John “Songbird” McCain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzVxbUOn4EI
John McCain Is No “Hero POW”
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-91618
The REAL John McCain - Bully, Traitor, Liar, Adulterer and Warmongering Criminal (with videos)
http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/government/fraud/elections_campaigning/news.php?q=1217103060
McCain and the POW Cover-Up
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/mccain-and-the-pow-cover-up/
Not mentioned in the story, the fire on the Forrestal also involved McCain, although blame for the fire fell to the flight crews.
ouch
Read the article.
At least you posted a reply related to McCain’s poor aircraft handling skill rather than rants about McCain’s career as a RINO which have been discussed on FR for years and which I concur with.
However, in response to the political posters on this thread:
I rarely if ever agree with Bill Kristol, but do agree with his estimate of Trump and the sad state of the GOP.
“There’s NO evidence that Trump is hurting the GOP at all – Bill Kristol
Posted by soopermexican on Jul 20, 2015”
http://therightscoop.com/theres-no-evidence-that-trump-is-hurting-the-gop-at-all-bill-kristol/
how so?
McCain has been listed as a “reverse ace” for a long time.
ping
Post #9 helped me out
Folks...
I despise McCain’s behavior and antics as a Senator, but how about a little perspective? ADM James Stockdale, who commanded the POWs at the Hoa Loa prison and having observed their actions and behavior, said McCain served honorably while imprisoned there.
And — much as I disdain SENATOR McCain, I will hold the words and accounts of ADM Stockdale higher than anyone on the face of the earth on this subject of POW McCain.
Read for yourselves.. http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/26stoc.html (link may no longer work, but Google “Stockdale on McCain” to access it.)
November 26, 1999
John McCain in the Crucible
By JAMES B. STOCKDALE
CORONADO, Calif. — I am not surprised by reports that Senator John McCain’s political enemies have been spreading rumors that his famous temper is a sign of a broader “instability” caused by his imprisonment in Vietnam.
In fact, a few weeks ago I received a call from an old friend who is also close to the George W. Bush campaign soliciting comments on Mr. McCain’s “weaknesses.” As I told that caller, I think John McCain is solid as a rock.
And I consider it blasphemy to smudge the straight-arrow prisoner-of-war record of a man who was near death when he arrived at Hoa Loa prison 1967: both arms broken, left leg broken, left shoulder broken by a civilian with a rifle butt.
He was eventually taken to the same rat-infested hospital room I had occupied two years earlier, and, like me, he had surgery on his leg. By then the Vietnamese had discovered that his father was the ranking admiral in the Pacific Fleet, and he received an offer that, as far as I know, was made to no other American prisoner: immediate release, no strings attached. He refused, thereby sentencing himself to four more years in a cell.
There was a special cramped and hot privy-like structure in that Hanoi prison reserved for whichever American was causing the Vietnamese the most trouble. I was the first in the camp to be locked up in it, and I gave it the name Calcutta.
There was only room for one person at a time in the cage, and after a couple of months I was taken out and marched back to a regular cell. As I limped along, I sneaked a peek at my replacement: John McCain, hobbling along on his own bad leg.
As one of the few Americans who spent more than four years in solitary confinement during that war, I know that pride and self-respect lead to aggressiveness, and aggressiveness leads to a deep sense of joy when one is under pressure. This is hardly a character flaw.
The military psychiatrists who periodically examine former prisoners of war have found that the more resistant a man was to harsh treatment, the more emotionally stable he is likely to become later in life.
The troublemakers who endured long stretches in solitary, the men we called the tigers, are for the most part more in tune with themselves now than are those who chose the easier path of nonconfrontation, which made them “deserving” of cell mates. The psychiatrists tell us that many of those prisoners who chose a more docile existence missed out on the joy of “getting even” after release; some look back on their performances with regret.
The psychiatrists have it partly right, but the truth of imprisonment is best learned from the writings of men who have spent a lot of time in cells, like Dostoyevsky, Cervantes and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The last described his feeling of high-mindedness in his gulag writings:
“And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. . . .
And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: ‘Bless you, prison!’ “
I understand that, and so does John McCain.
McCain was in the pilot seat of a jet when a air to air rocket hit it from the fire. The incident started when loading jets for mission, something we t wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire
I am sure that this official account does not accurately represent what happened. However, after reading this account, one can see why none of this “attached” to Lt McCain.
It was NOT an “air to air rocket”, it was a Zuni 5 Inch Unguided Rocket(50 lb explosive warhead). It went where you pointed it.
McCain “Wet Started” his F-4 to haze the newbie behind him. The flare caused a Zuni rocket on that Phantom jet to launch. Hitting McCain’s F-4. Hot dogging started the chain reaction.In the words of Iceman from Top Gun. McCain was dangerous. McCain was the only pilot immediately transferred off the Forrestal. “Wet Starting” was banned after this incident.
Actually, it is mentioned along with the possibility that the missile from another plane which hit McCain’s aircraft and started the fire was fired because McCain startled the other pilot with an intentional flame burst from his engine. Probably unlikely, but McCain had a history of hot dogging and bad luck (?) accidents that would have gotten anyone else but an admiral’s son sh/+canned. So accident or not the suspicion was predictable.
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