Ummm...there was nothing but ocean behind McCain's jet:
Here’s the other side of the story:
http://www.billinexile.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/forrestal2.jpg
The USS Forrestal — CV-59
McCain was acknowledged by many of his peers at the time as being an unsafe pilot and irresponsible hot dog — by the time of the Forrestal incident McCain had crashed four aircraft that he was piloting, a record that in any other naval aviator would have ended a career — and one of the unsafe practices that McCain was notorious for was a thing known as a “wet start” of his aircraft.
A wet start is when the pilot of a jet allows kerosene or jet fuel to pool in the engine and then, once enough fuel has accumulated, the pilot ignites his engine which results in a huge flame being shot to the rear. The purpose of this is to scare the shit out of the pilot in the plane immediately behind you who is waiting to take off.
Wet starts are illegal in the Navy but were common during the Vietnam era among hot young fighter jocks like McCain and by all accounts he enjoyed performing them whenever he thought he could get away with it.
On July 29th 1967, John McCain was in his A-4 Skyhawk aboard the USS Forrestal waiting to be taxied onto the steam catapult in order to launch from the deck of the ship.
Behind his aircraft was an F-4 Phantom jet fully loaded with ordinance including M-34 air to ground Zuni rockets.
At 10:52 AM as McCain waited for take off instructions reports from sailors on the scene indicate that he apparently decided to shake up the pilot of the F-4 to his rear and he performed a wet start on his jet.
http://www.billinexile.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/forrestalmccain.bmp
Hot shot pilot McCain is standing on the right.
The flame from his aircraft’s engine shot back reaching the Phantom and ignited the solid fuel motor on one of the Zuni missiles under the wing of that aircraft. The missile shot across the flight deck of the crowded carrier and slammed into the belly tank of a parked A-4D Skyhawk next to McCain’s craft and ignited the 400 gallons of JP-5 jet fuel in the tank.
When the fuel tank exploded it knocked two 1,000 pound bombs off their mounts and the burning fuel that spread across the deck ignited one of the bombs. The resulting explosion started a chain reaction, cooking off ordinance that was being loaded onto waiting aircraft all across the rear of the huge ship.
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Fire fighting efforts on July 29th, 1967.
One young sailor ran into the flames and found the strength to pick up a red hot 250 pound bomb that was on the verge of exploding and carried it to the side of the ship and threw it overboard.
The flight deck fire was brought under control in about an hour but the burning fuel that leaked into the hanger deck below caused even more ordinance to explode and that fire took more than 12 hours to extinguish.
At the end of the ordeal 131 sailors were dead — either blown to pieces or burned to death –and 168 were badly injured and before the smoke had even cleared or all the dead and wounded counted the navy had rushed John McCain off the aircraft carrier to the USS Oriskany, the only uninjured person on board the Foresstal to be evacuated in this way.
Sailors who were on board that day contend that the Navy removed McCain from the stricken carrier because they feared for his life at the hands of his fellow shipmates.
Needless to say, many of the sailors who lived through that horror have claimed that the Navy apparently hushed up much of the investigation and scrubbed the official findings so that McCain would never be able to be held to account and as of this date McCain has refused to release the complete set of his Navy records for examination — something that John Kerry did in 2004 during his presidential run.
A very sobering version ....
More telling - in my opinion - is the “reputation” he earned for wet starting - multiple times! - in the first place,
for mid-air “playing games” and “pilot-caused-incidents that lost TWO planes (plus another for “engine problems” that cannot be traced now,
and for getting the reputation for “plying his family” without remorse ....
McCain was not rushed off the Forrestal to the Oriskany by the Navy
He asked a NYT reporter who had come out to the Forrrestal to interview him, for a ride to Saigon in his helo and was interviewed there drinking scotch 2 days later during some “ much welcome R&R”
He rejoined the crippled Forrestal about a week later in Subic for some accident debriefings in which he claimed the Zuni hit his aircraft ( false) and caused his aircraft to release 2 bombs ( it was one bomb and the circumstances of the release are not open information)
Then John joined his Dad in Europe and screwed around for 3 months waiting for the accident report because damsure the Orisknay was not going to accept him pending the findings
Once the accident report pinned the released bomb on the aircraft of the dead LCDR Fred White, John was absolved ( despite his continuing claims it was his bombs) to go and fly again and he reported to the Oriskany in about October and was shot down weeks later- and then finally became a war hero
I would love to see just what it was that Kerry "released" in 2004. I know for one thing it wasn't the circumstances surrounding the awarding of 3 (count 'em!) 3 purple hearts. So I suspect that this was written by someone on the "other" side of the political spectrum. But I could be wrong.
And from such an authoritative source! You posted three image links from it and copy/pasted from its text. Now I dare you to post a proper link to that text!
Ummm...there was nothing but ocean behind McCain's jet:
When the errant rocket launch occurred and the fires started the ship went to General Quarters immediately by order of either The Captain or the OOD on watch on the Bridge. That order would be noted in nearly all log books on the ship. McCain upon exiting his burning craft would report to his squadron ready room for further orders. I can explain why. He was a pilot that was his station because he was attached to a squadron. Ships Company Officers are the ones who take over repair parties and oversaw operations involving functioning of the carrier.
I'm going to explain a little bit more of the issue which made a bad situation worse. Fire fighting wise on the Forrestal or any other carrier of the day laked having a system which was later to be developed called a Hi-CAP. It's an automatic sprinkler foaming system using Aquios Film Forming Foam aka AFFF as we called it in the day. It is designed for foaming the flight deck and hanger deck below. Once it was installed on carriers foaming could be done in a matter of seconds once the HI CAP station was activated. Foaming before then required time and a bucket brigade type of set up to carry five gallon buckets of foam up to the hose station. A Hi-Cap could do in seconds what it would take crews many minutes and lots of manpower to accomplish.
In the case of this incident with what was happening with the bombs it likely would not have stopped the carnage looking at the time frame involved from the rocket launch to a bomb exploding. The fires and there were many were so intense that the Triage for the injured had to be done all the way up at the Forecastle portion of the ship which is close to the bow and anchors in the forward most part of the ship. I would assume because that was where air was better and for communication capabilities with the bridge which I won't go into specifics on.
Had the helicopters caught fire an even bigger issue would have happened because you are dealing with a Magnesium fire the worse of the worst type of fire. The way to extinguish a magnesium fire safely is to throw the craft into the sea and it will continue to burn even then until the magnesium burns up. It makes its own oxygen source when burning.
The Forrestal Fire is the most scrutinized Naval fire in USN history. Coverup people may say? How when there were live cameras rolling with time stamp. The only thing McCain had to do with the fire was being in his aircraft when the fires began. The Navy has used the footage of that fire ever since the early 1970's maybe earlier as a training aid Navy wide. It's horrifying and shown so sailors take fire fighting and Damage Control training serious. Every sailor who attends bootcamp sees in meaning all sailors. Every sailor who is sent to fire fighting or DC school sees it. I went to Firefighting school several times myself over 4 years for fire department training and saw it.
The Navy changed some ways of doing things even into the late 1970's when they began a permanent fire department on the carriers pooled from all SHIPS COMPANY departments. I did two different stints at that. The second time as One on One for my duty section. Before that the Hull Technicians were stuck with the fire fighting task at sea and not a good idea because all of the welders could be wiped out in a below deck fire.
The Flightdeck and Hanger Deck managed by the Air Department has their own fire department called Crash and Salvage. They also handled the flightdeck crashes. After Forrestal the Navy put actual fire trucks on carriers and the fire truck was manned by a crew two or three of them IIRC wearing asbestos suits during Flight Ops. Weapons Department also had their own responders. Due to security reasons only security clearance cleared sailors could enter weapons spaces. Why? Because they carried Nukes back then.
If you go to the link that was posted for the thread and look at the aircraft spotting charts that will more than debunk the wet start rumor and others like it. The launch came from the starboard side aft of McCain who was forward of that craft but across the flightdeck.
A person can not like nor support McCain's politically or even personally and still understand that that fire was not his doing by any of the scuttlebutt rumors going around. Almost any sailor who did time on a carrier can debunk it and definitely any Navy pilots or aircraft handlers known as Aviation Bosun Mates. There are many Freepers quite capable of debunking the McCain caused it rumor whether they like him or not and I know of no one who does including myself.