[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
Flying takes brains, to be sure. But he lost 5 planes.
He couldn’t find where he parked them on the aircraft carrier?
[/quote]
What I mean is this:
[quote]It’s quite true that McCain lost five jets in military service. However, that doesn’t prove he did anything wrong. However, a close reading of how he lost five planes tells a quite interesting story. For reasons that will become clear, the story is best told in reverse order.
- On Oct. 26, 1967 John McCain was shot down over Vietnam and ended up as a POW in North Vietnam. It was his 23rd mission over North Vietnam.
[It’s hard to remember these days, when we lose so very few jets in combat (because we developed around 1980 the technology to blind the enemy by knocking out his ground radar while we control the aerial battlefield from Airborne Warning and Control System jets almost over the horizon) that we lost 3,322 fixed-win aircraft in the Vietnam war, perhaps the majority due to enemy fire.]
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On July 29, 1967 his plane was destroyed by a missile accidentally fired by another plane waiting to take off. He barely survived. 134 sailors died that day. There is no evidence that McCain did anything wrong. The videos of the fires and explosions are astonishing. The first fire crew was wiped out by a bomb explosion and was replaced by volunteers in seconds. Subsequent explosions wiped out the replacement firemen. Tragically, the volunteers didn�??t know how to fight a carrier fire and made the situation worse.
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In 1965, he lost a plane flying home from the Army-Navy game due to mechanical failure. This was very common at the time. I once met a Vietnam pilot who lost a Phantom due to oil pressure failure. I asked what the consequences were. He said that his commanding officer was upset for 10 minutes and he had to fill out a form.
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He lost a plane after hitting power line over the Iberian Peninsula. Presumably pilot era.
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As a student pilot he lost a plane in Corpus Christi bay while trying to land.
The last 3 losses do not reflect adversely on John McCain. How about the first two? I would question whether any aviator whose name wasn�??t McCain would have survived losing a plane as a student and then hitting power lines.[/quote]
In the flying community, there’s a saying that goes, “Any landing you walk away from is a good landing.” So I guess most of McCain’s landings were good.
A commenter at the same blog offers this opinion:
[quote]I was giving McCain a pass on 2 of his 5 destroyed planes: the accident you mentioned and the one he was shot down in.
Losing 5 planes over a career that involved only 20 hours of combat missions is a big red flag.
His legendary temper, arrogance and insuborination at the Academy (and throughout his life) as the son and grandson of Admirals are tell tale clues as to the most likely explaination behind McCain’s exceptionally poor record at keeping planes in flight.
A 70+yo man like McCain’s shouting down and swearing at fellow Senators, journalists and individuals betrays a life of unchecked arrogance, conceit and immaturity.
McCain is going to make Bush II look like a shrinking daisy when it comes to craming his bad policies like amnesty for illegal immigrants down the nation’s throat.
If McCains wins the nomination Republicans would be better off voting for Hillary of Obama. Although the Dems are marginally worse policy-wise compared to McCain, they are won’t trample the Consitution and ignore established law to force their ill-conceived will on a weak-kneed Congress, uncritical MSM and largely clueless public like Bush II has done (and McCain will do even more of).[/quote]
I’m inclined to agree. For any mere mortal, losing a plane in flight school is a one-way ticket out of flight school. Hitting power lines in flight is probably a career ender. Not for McCain though.
