| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
|
 Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:10 pm Post subject: John McCain: Just a terrible pilot? |
 |
|
We all know that John McCain was a POW. During his time in Vietnam, he was undoubtedly brave and loyal to the US.
However, because of what he did as a POW, do we overlook the fact that he "lost" five aircraft? FIVE AIRCRAFT?!?!?
| Quote: |
McCain, the "below par" pilot, eventually lost 5 military aircraft, the first during a training flight in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay while trying to land. The Navy ignored the crash and graduated McCain in 1960.
While deployed in the Mediterranean, the hard partying McCain lost a second aircraft. Timberg described the crash: "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral."
Unscathed, McCain returned to Pensacola Station where he was promoted to flight instructor for Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi. The airfield at Meridian, McCain Field, was named in honor of McCain's grandfather.
In 1964 McCain became involved with Carol Shepp, a model from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he had met at Annapolis. They were married in Philadelphia on July 3, 1965.
Flight instructor McCain lost a third aircraft while flying a Navy trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. Timberg wrote that McCain radioed, "I've got a flameout" before ejecting at one thousand feet. McCain parachuted onto a beach moments before his plane slammed into a clump of trees.
The Navy dismissed the crash as "unavoidable" and assigned McCain to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in December 1966, which was patrolling the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. In Spring 1967, the Forrestal was assigned to join the Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign against North Vietnam.
McCain lost his fourth plane on board the Forrestal on July 29, 1967 when a rocket inadvertently slammed into his bomb laden jet. McCain escaped, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors. McCain was transferred from the badly damaged Forrestal to the USS Oriskany. Shortly afterwards, on Oct. 26, 1967, he was shot down and captured by the Vietnamese. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| do we overlook the fact that he "lost" five aircraft? |
But does it in any way disqualify him from being president? I say, leave the sleaze to the Republicans. [/quote] |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 12:12 am Post subject: |
|
|
Recently McCain made a statement inviting Obama to join him on a plane to fly between the upcoming debate venues.
He promised that he would not be the pilot.
McCains wife has a better flying record. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 12:33 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| do we overlook the fact that he "lost" five aircraft? |
But does it in any way disqualify him from being president? I say, leave the sleaze to the Republicans. |
I'm not saying that it doesn't qualify him to be president at all. I'm not inferring anything at all by posting this. I was just amazed at this fact. I thought it was three. But five? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 12:55 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| I thought it was three. But five? |
Personally, I'm of the opinion that people get two chances at marriage. The 'right' to get married should be revoked at the second divorce. They can just live together with someone after that and leave the state out of it. I've never considered pilots but my gut says 2 lost planes is a reasonable limit. This might be because I'm a believer in Freud's idea of accident prone people subconsiously punishing themselves.
Maybe I should reconsider my original attitude toward losing 5 planes. Hmmm...McCain is unqualified to be president because he has a self-destructive streak and might take the country down with him. I wonder if Gopher would accept that as a valid argument against McCain. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
huffdaddy
Joined: 25 Nov 2005
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:39 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| do we overlook the fact that he "lost" five aircraft? |
But does it in any way disqualify him from being president? I say, leave the sleaze to the Republicans. |
One can only wonder what they'd be saying if Obama had crashed five planes. Maybe McCain was trying to pull an Orr from Catch-22? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:46 am Post subject: |
|
|
| huffdaddy wrote: |
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| Quote: |
| do we overlook the fact that he "lost" five aircraft? |
But does it in any way disqualify him from being president? I say, leave the sleaze to the Republicans. |
One can only wonder what they'd be saying if Obama had crashed five planes. Maybe McCain was trying to pull an Orr from Catch-22? |
Well, I am beginning to wonder about a couple of things, now that Ya-ta has mentioned it.
How do people think McCain would make a better Commander-in-Chief? He came in second to the bottom in his class at Annapolis. He obviously failed in every aspect of his military career. He got shot down (?) in Vietnam. He is responsible for the deaths on many sailors in one of his "accidents."
He seems pretty flippin' terrible at military stuff, now that I think about it. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Paddycakes
Joined: 05 May 2003
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 3:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
Well, John McCain and the Republicans routinely play-up his military career and the fact that he was a fighter pilot who got shot down as one of his qualifications to be president.
So that makes his military record fair game.
Son of an admiral, huh. Guess that would explain a lot.
Also, being a pilot is in no way necessarily a positive qualification to be President.
I happen to know something about this field... let's just say that the public mystic and the reality are very, very different.
Most pilots are uni-dimensional morons frankly, and a very large chunk of them are about to be out-of-work. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kikomom
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: them thar hills--Penna, USA--Zippy is my kid, the teacher in ROK. You can call me Kiko
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:11 am Post subject: |
|
|
He may have lost five aircraft, but he hasn't lost his nerve. Gotta give him that.
These were very interesting. The only one that isn't news to me is the 4th:
| Quote: |
| McCain lost his fourth plane on board the Forrestal on July 29, 1967 when a rocket inadvertently slammed into his bomb laden jet. McCain escaped, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors. McCain was transferred from the badly damaged Forrestal to the USS Oriskany. Shortly afterwards, on Oct. 26, 1967, he was shot down and captured by the Vietnamese. |
I had only learned of this a few months ago myself--that he was in the Forrestal Fire. Any navy people here know that this is the worst accident in navy history. Tapes of it are shown in boot camp yet. When I read that it was McCain's bird that was hit astounded me, that he crawled out of it to the hell on the flat top that day. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Leslie Cheswyck
Joined: 31 May 2003
Location: University of Western Chile
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:18 am Post subject: |
|
|
He downed five planes. That makes him an ace!  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kikomom
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: them thar hills--Penna, USA--Zippy is my kid, the teacher in ROK. You can call me Kiko
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:29 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Pligganease wrote: |
He is responsible for the deaths on many sailors in one of his "accidents."
He seems pretty flippin' terrible at military stuff, now that I think about it. |
Pligga, if you're referring to the 134 deaths on the Forrestal, he wasn't responsible. He was sitting in his A-4 waiting to launch. This account has him saying the first rocket whoosed by...
| Quote: |
Lt. Cmdr. Robert "Bo" Browning one of the pilots due for launch with many others, he was seated in the cockpit of his fueled and armed Skyhawk; the plane was spotted way aft, to port. Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III said later he heard a "whooshy" sound then a "low-order explosion" in front of him. Suddenly, two A-4s ahead of his plane were engulfed in flaming jet fuel � JP-5 � spewed from them. A bomb dropped to the deck and rolled about six feet and came to rest in a pool of burning fuel.
The awful conflagration, which was to leave 132 Forrestal crewmen dead, 62 more injured and two missing and presumed dead, had begun. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:56 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Kikomom wrote: |
| Pligganease wrote: |
He is responsible for the deaths on many sailors in one of his "accidents."
He seems pretty flippin' terrible at military stuff, now that I think about it. |
Pligga, if you're referring to the 134 deaths on the Forrestal, he wasn't responsible. He was sitting in his A-4 waiting to launch. This account has him saying the first rocket whoosed by...
| Quote: |
Lt. Cmdr. Robert "Bo" Browning one of the pilots due for launch with many others, he was seated in the cockpit of his fueled and armed Skyhawk; the plane was spotted way aft, to port. Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain III said later he heard a "whooshy" sound then a "low-order explosion" in front of him. Suddenly, two A-4s ahead of his plane were engulfed in flaming jet fuel � JP-5 � spewed from them. A bomb dropped to the deck and rolled about six feet and came to rest in a pool of burning fuel.
The awful conflagration, which was to leave 132 Forrestal crewmen dead, 62 more injured and two missing and presumed dead, had begun. |
|
Eh...
I guess responsible was the wrong word. Involved is better. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:57 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Leslie Cheswyck wrote: |
| He downed five planes. That makes him an ace! |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kikomom
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: them thar hills--Penna, USA--Zippy is my kid, the teacher in ROK. You can call me Kiko
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Jandar wrote: |
McCain's wife has a better flying record. |
And apparantly knows little of the ground transportation the rest of us deal with daily...
| Cindy McCain wrote: |
"In Arizona the only way to get around the state is by small private plane."
video |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:32 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Maybe McCain was trying to pull an Orr from Catch-22? |
Thanks for that. I hadn't thought of Orr in years. I really do need to re-read Catch-22. Pure joy. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
