Is it unusual to get to crash 5 airplanes?

[Doctor_J]

I started watching "When We Left Earth" on TDC. When Grissom's capsule sunk at the end of his Mercury flight, it was the first craft he'd ever lost (and last), though he'd been a test pilot for more than a decade. I thought that after losing 2 20-million-dollar airplanes, McSame would have been grounded, maybe sent to guard the shores of Alabama with Chimp. Is it unusual to keep crashing planes and keep your flight privledges?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Not if your dad is an admiral.

[speedoo]

2. His daddy was an Admiral.

The normal rules never applied for him.

[baldguy]

5. And his granddaddy was an Admiral.

With two navy ships named after him.

[Major Hogwash]

3. I would think so. I would hope so.

McCain was more dangerous to our Navy than he was to the enemy.

McCain sounds more like Roger Ramjet than Chuck Yeager!

[tularetom]

4. You want to hear an interesting theory about the Forrestal disaster

Google "McCain wet start" and read any of the first few posts.

[RamboLiberal]

15. That wet start story is internet crap

On the Forrestal the planes were parked where the exausts were pointed towards the ocean. Any flame exaust from a "wet start" if such a thing even exists would go harmlessly towards the ocean. There was no plane behind McCain's. His plane was parked forward rear port side. The plane who's Zuni rocket fired was no where near McCain as it was the rear most plane on the starboard/aft side.

[mcctatas]

6. I would think it's something of an anomaly...

Of course, if I am to believe everything I read on DU, we aren't supposed to talk about this stuff because it will make us look bad;)

edit to add, so how about we let the freepers trash him and we just quote them?:

To: ThePythonicCow
...McCain was "positively one of the weakest students to pass our way, and received consistently poor marks...He had no real ability and was clearly out of his element in an airplane, and way over his head..."

Substitute "students" with "presidents", and "airplane" with "Oval Office" and you'll pretty much predict how history will judge a McCain Presidency.
16 posted on Monday, February 04, 2008 9:10:12 AM by COBOL2Java (If McCain loses, he will have been defeated by his own Inner Shmuck.)
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1964536/posts

[Occam Bandage]

7. Well, the third through fifth weren't really his fault.

the third was an engine problem, the Forrestal disaster was hardly his fault, and you have to give the Vietnamese at least some credit for shooting him down.

The first he lost while practicing landing. Pretty bad, but not unheard of.

The second? He flew into some power lines. If he were anyone but Admiral McCain's boy, he'd have been on the sea, not in the sky.

[The River]

8. The A-4's He Flew

had notoriously weak front landing gear.
They collapse on carrier landings.. a lot.
Technically it is a crash but it's not
much more dangerous than a dented fender
/ busted axle on a car. (just more expensive)

I'll bet his only real crash was the one in NVN.

[RamboLiberal]

18. Here's the description of the 3 that I consider legitimate losses

of planes that may or may not be his fault. Be interesting to see the accident reports.

In training on landing approach he put a plane into the bay. I think he was trying to land on a runaway not a carrier.

He flew in to some power lines in Italy.

And he had an engine flameout while going cross country to attend a Navy football game. Now I know just from reading news reports that engine flameouts especially in that era of military jets was not that uncommon and usually not pilot error but usually did result in loss of the plane.

[Snarkoleptic]

9. These guys have some interesting ideas on the subject.

http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/

[Gore1FL]

10. the five planes

1> 1958 when he crashed Corpus Christi Bay while practicing landings.

2> Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula he hit power lines.

3> Flying a Navy trainer solo to Philadelphia.

The following were not exactly his fault--he was hit by missiles:

4> July 29, 1967, While waiting his turn to launch, an rocket fired by accident hit his plane. The subsequent explosions killed 134 sailors, destroyed other aircraft, and damaged the ship.

5> His A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

[tularetom]

12. There's a sizable contingent of former Forrestal crewmen

who have some views that differ with the conventional wisdom on your No 4.

Their opinion is that McCain did a "wet start" the engine of his A-4 which involved pumping an excess of kerosene into the engine and then firing it up. Supposed to be a joke on the guy in the F-4 behind him. But the resulting fireball ignited a Zuni missile on the F-4 which detonated and struck the fuel tanks on McCain's aircraft starting an explosion and fire which eventually killed the F-4 pilot and 166 other crewmen.

Out of fears for his safety, McCain was immediately transferred to the Oriskany. There were a lot of pissed off people on the Forrestal who lost buddies in the fire and a lot of them blamed McCain for it. The Navy of course whitewashed the incident.

I don't know whether or not it's true or not. But there are a lot of people who were there who swear it is.

[Major Hogwash]

13. That's what I heard, too.

McCain was far more responsible for the Forrestal accident than some have claimed.

It was the fact that his father was an admiral that got that accident covered up.

[RamboLiberal]

17. All I've read is the allegation of one Forrestal crewman

who is not named or ever named anywhere. I googled a lot of Forrestal memorial sites over the weekend and not one crewman brings up this story.

Get proof. I want to see the Forrestal crewmen testifying on film. Otherwise I consider the same as the shitty swiftboating that was done to Kerry. And hell the swiftboaters had testimony against Kerry on film though I sure believed them to be liars and I believe many were proven to be liars!

Like the Whitey false rumor on Michelle Obama - where's the video proof? There's a lot of Forrestal crewmen still alive - why no one saying this on video? Why no names of these crewmen?

We can beat McCain w/o this crap.

[WeDidIt]

11. Not when your daddy has these...

[ElsewheresDaughter]

14. not when your father is a big military brass wearing muc muc

[RamboLiberal]

16. Make that 3 planes

Getting hit by a accidentally fired Zuni rocket while still parked on the carrier deck is not pilot error!

And getting hit by a missile over Nam is also not pilot error or all the Hanoi Hilton pilot POWs were screwups.

You can question the other 3.

[Median Democrat]

19. McCain Has A Dismal Academy Record - Classic Nepostism

The GOP can talk about affirmative action all they want, but John McCain was near the bottom of his class out of the academy. What is interesting is to determine whether he should have even been flying given his poor standing out of the academy. McCain also only flew 23 combat missions before he got shot down, which is a relatively small number. Other Vietnam aviators flew hundreds of combat missions.

It is not uncommon to lose aircraft during a war, but in John McCain's case, only 1 aircraft was lost in combat, his final mission.

[Overseas]

20. Not if your name is John Sidney McCain III. /eom

[cliffordu]

21. A friend of mine's father survived the loss of three aircraft.

during WWII.

Walked away from all of them, too.

Three P-51 Mustangs. (sob...)

He also test piloted the B-52. Rumor had it that he flew one underneath the Golden Gate bridge but I could never substantiate it.

[Shakespeare]

23. That's a LOT different.

Planes lost in combat (when they were dropping like flies) in a theater like Europe/Japan is one thing. Botching multiple carrier landings (and not having your Navy career dead-ended for it) is quite another.

[cliffordu]

25. I know - Col. Pierson was a qualified badass.

Nasty, unpleasant perfectionist. Great pilot from what I understood.

[GoneOffShore]

22. And his nickname? Crash.

[pwb]

24. Admiral begets Admiral begets class dunce.

Maybe if he paid more attention at the academy he would have been a better pilot. Just what we need another blue blood favorite son as president, that has worked out so well with blue blood bush.:sarcasm:

[dailykoff]

26. Bush and Cheney only crashed four,

and three were fake, so I guess the answer is yes.