I heard that McCain did a wet start in A-4,just to piss off the pilot behind him in an F-4 Phantom.That started a chain reaction of unfortunate and deadly events.McCain was evacuated almost immediately for his own safety.
A wet start. No afterburner needed.
Maybe he did that at some other point. The Forrestal fire was started by a rocket, not McCain’s plane. The flight deck video is available on Wikipedia.