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Was this the second or third plane he lost?

McCain did lose two Navy aircraft while piloting them. One crash was found to be be McCain's fault, the other due to an engine failure of undetermined cause.. A third was destroyed on the deck of the carrier USS Forrestal when a missile fired accidentally from another plane hit either the plane next to McCain's or, less likely, his own aircraft, triggering a disastrous fire that killed 134 sailors and nearly killed McCain. A fourth plane was lost when he was shot down over North Vietnam on a bombing mission over Hanoi.
A fifth alleged "crash" turns out to be a misinterpretation of a flight accident that did not result in the loss of the aircraft. McCain admitted to causing that incident through "daredevil clowning" but returned safely.

I don't know what official Navy rules are, but it doesn't seem quite fair to describe the aircraft that was blown to pieces after it was engulfed in a massive fire caused by a missile launched from another pilot's machine as a plane McCain "lost."

There have been many comments here at FR over the years to the effect that any pilot who had an aircraft loss charged to him (as McCain did, according to the FactCheck writeup) would have been washed out of the program, and that the only reason that didn't happen to McCain was because of his family connections in the Navy.

A fifth alleged "crash" turns out to be a misinterpretation of a flight accident that did not result in the loss of the aircraft. McCain admitted to causing that incident through "daredevil clowning" but returned safely.

After flying low and fast over Spain, McCain returned to the USS Intrepid with ten feet of Spanish power line dangling from his airplane, which also had a severed oil line. The Spanish were not pleased.

I am reminded of the Cavalese cable car disaster of 1998, in which an EA-6B Prowler doing 540 mph at an altitude of between 260 and 330 feet severed a cable car cable, killing 20 people.

Actually, three (3) airplanes. Once you sign the A-Sheet (Aircraft Commander Sheet) in the ADB (Aircraft Discrepancy Book), you own it until you sign the Yellow Sheet afterwards in Maintenance Control.

It’s not fair, but it’s tradition.

Doesn’t prove fault, just clarifying an old Navy Pilot-ism.