McCain & Starting the Forrestal Fire: Talk about his ACTUAL blunders instead

[caraher]

As much as I'd love to have more "dirt" on McCain, the tales blaming him for setting off the tragic 1967 fire aboard the Forrestal are mostly rubbish. (And in fact, far-right wing talking points; as far as I've determined the story originated during the 2000 primary in this story for Rev. Moon's "Insight" magazine. People who repeat this story might as well go whole-hog and recycle Rove's illegitimate black baby tale; both share equal grounding in fact...)

First, who are you going to believe: Moonie "journalism" or your own lying eyes? Watching footage of the fire debunks many of the conflicting claims about operations on Forrestal at the time of the accident. You can watch this 1960s-vintage narrated film or this recent in-depth documentary (marred chiefly by footage of contemporary F-18 operations as they talk about Phantoms). As you watch, it's helpful to bear in mind the arrangement of aircraft on the flight deck (below, from an online article quoting the October 1967 Naval Aviation News:



Some accounts assert that McCain was/was not to blame because his A-4 was on a catapult when the fire started. (Interesting how this one gets used both ways!) It's clear both from the diagram showing aircraft locations and the video that there were no A-4s on any of the catapults at the time the incident began. Any account that insists McCain was on a catapult can be safely discounted.

Even if a "wet start" were to expose an armed rocket to a flame, it would be unlikely to ignite. Indeed, one of the factors that made the Forrestal fire so tragic was the fact that fire crews know there's a certain amount of time they have to work before a munition "cooks off" due to external fires. I don't know what that would be for the propellant or warhead of a Zuni rocket, but for the bombs ordinarily carried by A-4s at that time it should be about 2.5 minutes. But in fact, the aging bombs actually loaded that day were less stable and had cookoff times little more than half that of the usual bombs. And this does lead to the one spot where McCain could be among those who should share blame - and not for anything he did in the cockpit.

According to the blog Milfuegos, an unnamed "eyewitness" asserts that

McCain and the Forrestal's skipper, Capt. John K. Beling, were warned about the danger of using M-65 1000-lb. bombs manufactured in 1935, which were deemed too dangerous to use during World War II and, later, on B-52 bombers. The fire from the Zuni misfire resulted in the heavy 1000 pounders being knocked loose from the pylons of McCain's A-4, which were only designed to hold 500-pound bombs.

I have been unable to verify whether John McCain III had any authority over ordnance selection. The assertion that 1000 pound bombs are too heavy for the A-4 is patently false barring incredible incompetence on the part of a lot more people than the admiral's son. (The A-4E had one centerline station, in this case occupied by a fuel tank, two inboard wing stations good to 2200 pounds each and two outboard stations good to 600 pounds each; the A-4C, which a few sources say was on the deck, omits the outboard stations. The only possibility of being overweight on a station would be if someone tried to hang 1000 pound bombs on the outboard stations, a highly unlikely screwup.) This casts some doubt on the reliability of this unnamed purported eyewitness. Other sites I found that touch on this topic are of the anti-semitic tinfoil hat variety (linking this and other naval setbacks of the time, including the bombing of the USS Liberty, to the elder McCain's collusion in some vast zionist conspiracy).

This message board post has an account that squares with the recent documentary. I have yet to track down the "Navy report" this supposedly draws from, though. It notes that the Forrestal was out of action until the following April, which provides a partial answer to an assertion that McCain was transported from the Forrestal to avoid the wrath of his shipmates: There was simply little to no use for aviators to stay with the ship when there was nothing for them to fly! This is on top of the fact that he was at least a little nicked-up by the event: "McCain escaped from his jet, but was struck in the legs and chest by shrapnel when a bomb exploded underneath his airplane." But he wasn't hurt badly enough to resist a side trip on his way to recovery. The late New York Times reporter R.W. Apple was assigned to cover the story, and met McCain and other survivors who were on their way to Subic Bay to recover. But the admiral's son soon developed other plans...

Mr. McCain writes of their meeting in his biography Faith of My Fathers : "A distraction from my despondency appeared on the way to Subic in the person of R.W. (Johnny) Apple, the Times correspondent in Saigon. Serving as a pool reporter, he arrived by helicopter with a camera crew to examine the damaged ship and interview the survivors. When he finished collecting material for his report, he offered to take me back to Saigon with him for the daily press briefing irreverently referred to as the `Five O'Clock Follies.' Seeing it as an opportunity for some welcome R&R, I jumped at the invitation. I passed a few days there pleasantly, wondering about my future and beginning a lifelong friendship with Johnny."

Smells like another example of the benefits of choosing a well-connected man as his father!

One "official" account that seems very "off" claims that

LCDR John S. McCain, III, sitting in Aircraft No. 416 preparing to launch, afterward described the horror: “I thought my aircraft exploded” he recounted as the first blast ripped through the aircraft assembled on the flight deck. “Flames were everywhere”. The young pilot climbed out of his Skyhawk, poised perilously on the A-4C and then leapt through the flames and ran for his life. As he did so the naval aviator saw another pilot jump and roll clear of his aircraft but the flames caught his uniform ablaze. LCDR McCain turned back to help the man when a bomb exploded and knocked him off his feet and backward about 10 feet. He never saw his shipmate again.

This is the only reference I've found to his having paused to help someone else... not that I'd blame him for a single-minded flight from the inferno! But it's an odd detail, and I don't think even his campaign trumpets this.

In the end, at worst, McCain (along with many other officers of similar rank, both before and after the Forrestal fire) consented (if only by silence) to the use of unstable bombs. I don't think this really strikes very hard at the case for or against McSame the candidate. Far more relevant than 40-year-old videos of burning aircraft are videos like this one showing McCain's - or at least his handlers'- fear of the truth about what he offers the nation. We don't need to stoop to swift-boating - the more we focus on his war record, the more that makes the fact that he has one and Obama doesn't seem like a reason to pick McSame. And worse, it weakens our credibility at a time when the facts are enough. We should maintain a healthy respect for the truth - not because we are being "polite" but because the truth IS our power, and we play fast and loose with it at our peril.

[Fridays Child]

1. The story I read didn't say that the rocket cooked off. It said that, when McCain...

...wet-started his plane, the other pilot panicked and fired the rocket. And, considering McCain's early reputation for being an irresponsible asshole, how difficult is it to imagine that he might do a wet start just to screw around with the other crew members on the carrier.

In any case, it's way past time for Democrats to leave their knives at home and start bringing guns to GOP gunfights. If Republicans are willing to do anything to win and we're not, you might as well say hello to President McCain, right now.

[RamboLiberal]

2. The plane with the Zuni that fired was aft of and on opposite

side of deck of McCain's plane. McCain's exaust was nowhere near this plane and was actually facing the ocean as were all the other planes. It was an electrical surge when switched from external to internal power that caused the Zuni rocket to fire across the deck, taking off the arm at the shoulder of one sailor on the deck then hitting McCain's plane knocking loose an external fuel tank and the old WWII era bomb that cooked off in 134 seconds.

Oh and from everything I read McCain had no responsibility whatever for what was loaded on the ship in way of ordanance. There was concern on the ship when these bombs were loaded the night before by those in charge of ordanance. Read "Sailors to the End" which was written several years ago and is not a political book but an honest accounting of the fire focused of the heroism of the everyday sailors in this tragic incident for the truth about this event.

I agree with the OP it fruitless to pursue this Forrestal crap and is akin to swiftboating Kerry endured.

Also look up DU'er CherokeeProgressive who was a flight deck sailor and is knowledgeable and posted the truth on the incident.

[Cheap_Trick]

3. Sailors to the End

is an excellent book. And I agree. This was the ONE plane that McCain lost that wasn't his fault.