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Forrestal arrived on Yankee Station on July 25 [1967]and immediately began combat operations, her aircraft flying 150 sorties during the next 4 days, without the loss of a single aircraft. At 10:52 A.M. on July 29, the second launch was being readied when a Zuni rocket accidentally fired from an F-4 Phantom parked on the starboard side of the flight deck aft of the island. The missile streaked across the deck into a 400 gallon belly fuel tank on a parked A-4D Skyhawk. The ruptured tank spew highly flammable JP-5 fuel onto the deck which ignited spreading flames over the flight deck under other fully loaded aircraft ready for launch. The ensuing fire caused ordinance to explode and other rockets to ignite. Spread by the wind, the flames engulfed the aft end of the stricken ship turning the flight deck into a blazing inferno.. Berthing spaces immediately below the flight deck became death traps for fifty men, while other crewmen were blown overboard by the explosion.

USS Forrestal Museum

McCain's involvement? He was sitting in the cockpit of the A-4 that was hit by the Zuni. How that turned into "...accidently dropped the bomb from his own plane onto the deck of the carrier and its explosion caused the conflaguration that Killed Hundreds of Our Brave Sailors" I have no idea. The thing that pisses me off most about this story is that I can't stand McCain but this is so stupid and so detracting from his many real issues that here I am having to defend him.