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Thanx for keeping me straight on the E’s dates——I just fixed ‘em and just took them as they came. That whole Veetnam decade is just one date to me. I have an old video, history channel I think, that deals with the ‘69 fire and it clearly mentions that McCain was sitting in a cockpit very close to the missile that cooked off. But I’ve always suspected that the guys doing the story were mixing up details of the Enterprise fire and the Forrestal fire which were very similar circumstances. We didn’t have the complete report yet on the Forrestal incident when the Enterprise lit up so wouldn’t have known who McCain was at the time. Forrestal was repaired at Subic where one of the sailor machinests fell in love with a Flip chick, wanted to stay longer, so he dropped a big crescent into a reduction gear box——delayed them another 60 days. I think he just got out of jail a couple years ago. The E came to Pearl and we were really grateful to the crew for absolutely deep-chucking every single piece of burned/damaged crap on the way so we had a very clean hull to start repairing. The scrap pile we generated in the yard from cutting out damage only filled about two dumpsters.
How many planes does McCain owe us for? 4?

Heck it's been over 30 years since I got out and my two MED deployments melt together LOL. Some events I can't quite place time frame on. McCain's plane though was pointed away from the impact. I can't remember the exact configuration off the top of my head but one look said there was no way. The aircraft spotting would have been videoed as the actual fire was itself. Oriskany, Forestall, and "E", all caught fire in the same region months apart. Odd enough the carrier McCain flew off of {Oriskany} had a bad fire off Nam in October 1966 before he was assigned to it after surviving the Forestall fire.

Forestall was the first of it's class and the end of an era. It was the last 600 PSI propulsion for carriers. Saratoga was the first 1200 PSI.

I vaguely remember hearing about the reduction gear incident maybe after basic training. I'm not sure how many planes McCain actually lost. In my 4 years on a carrier I'd put our aircraft loss numbers at about 8-12 and that was 77-80 era. A Tomcat came in low one night hit the round down and broke the landing gear, an S-3 Viking missed first three arresting wires snagged the fourth and went over the side {no survivors}, Two F-14's rolled on the hanger bay during hard list and went nose too nose, about 4 or more A-6's would go out and drop into the water like a brick due to catastrophic engine failures. That's life on the big city.

The Oriskany fire was a little different in origin. It was started by a lit flare being tossed in the flare box. The other two fires Forestall and "E" were missile related off Nam which adds to confusion.

BTW we had a guy do a stunt about as supid as the reduction gear incident. We made a trip down to St Thomas and an Airdale decided to fall off the flight deck so we thought. The evening we pulled out they called a man overboard. We searched all that and most of the next day then suspended search.

When we got back to port the Old Man made an announcement that the missing airman had been located. It seems that when the Navy sent the couriers to give his mom notice of him missing at sea she said why he's in the living room. He booked a commercial flight home and had a buddy toss his flight deck gear over the side that evening. Now that's LOW!

A lot of stuff goes or or went on back then that never made the news.