If McCain showed up as my XO I would have had him gone in about 30 days. He’s a big talker but a total pussy. I would never let him try to direct real warriors. Real warriors are already motivated, they don’t need some two bit cheese stick talking to them.
“If McCain showed up as my XO I would have had him gone in about 30 days. He’s a big talker but a total pussy. I would never let him try to direct real warriors. Real warriors are already motivated, they don’t need some two bit cheese stick talking to them.”
In fairness to McCain’s actual command experience, it seems to have been very effective.
“When his time at the war college was up, McCain was assigned to the Replacement Air Group 174 in Jacksonville. The squadron trained pilots to fly A-7 fighter planes and was the largest Navy squadron in the country, with about 1,000 sailors and 75 planes. It was also among the Navy’s more dysfunctional units. Defense budget cuts had left the squad without resources to buy replacement parts for damaged planes, and nearly 20 had been grounded for more than 60 days - some for years - when McCain arrived.
His first months were spent as the squadron’s executive officer, where he learned to fly the A-7 and mastered the workings of the unit. In 1976, he was made commander of the entire squadron, an unusual promotion given McCain’s limited command experience. The Navy’s policy was to catch up the POWs with their contemporaries, despite their missed years of service, said Adm. Jim Holloway, then the chief of naval operations, and the policy helped McCain get the job. Still, the promotion raised a few eyebrows.
So did McCain’s ambitions. Rather than sticking to the status quo, McCain immediately set about repairing the unit’s ailing planes. When the squadron’s department heads tried to discourage him, he fired them and replaced them with younger, more ambitious officers.
Carl Smith, a flight instructor who was among those McCain chose for leadership, said McCain called a meeting of the entire squadron staff, where he told them that he planned to get every plane running again before his command was up. Smith said there was no reason to think that the goal was achievable, but McCain set his sights high and then sought about convincing the rest of the squadron. After sending a letter informing his commanders of his plan, he made the rounds, visiting every shop and encouraging his pilots and repair crews.
“Just through his marvelous way of motivating people, he turned that squadron around in no time at all and just had everybody pulling together in another direction towards a very clearly defined goal,” Smith said. “People were working overtime. They were coming in to do jobs when it wasn’t their shift. It was absolutely inspired behavior.”
The day before McCain’s assignment was up, Smith flew the last of the squadron’s grounded planes. As McCain describes it in his memoir Worth the Fighting For, the plane was barely ready for the test and flew with its landing gear down, but it flew. That year, the squadron received its first ever Meritorious Unit Citation.”