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Subject: FW: "Ace" mccain
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 07:19:43 -0500
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-----Original Message-----
From: Buzz [
eagleflt@hrtc.net]
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2000 5:03 PM
To: Buzz
Subject: "Ace" mccain
Subj: "Ace" McCain
Date: 2/27/2000 2:20:37 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: usvet@icomnet.com (usvet)
To: bear317@aol.com (Roger)
Feb. 26, 2000
Will 'Ace' McCain Flame Out Again?
By Kelly Patricia O'Meara
omeara@insightmag.com
Insight Mag.Com
http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200002276.shtml
Over the years he's played many roles and worn many titles,
including
Navy
aviator, prisoner of war, hero, congressman, U.S. senator,
Washington
insider, maverick outsider and, now, presidential candidate. But
the one
title of which few are aware is that of "service ace."
John Sidney McCain III is known among many of his Vietnam
flight
buddies as
"Ace" McCain. This title has not been bestowed upon McCain
because he
destroyed five enemy aircraft. On the contrary: It was five on
our side
- in
fact, five of his own. Since throwing his hat into the
presidential
ring, the
fact that McCain was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy
nearly at the
bottom of his class has been publicized. His star-crossed
flying, on the
other hand, remains unknown to most.
Robert Timberg, author of The Nightingale's Song, a book about
Annapolis
graduates and their tours in Vietnam, wrote that McCain "learned
to fly
at
Pensacola, though his performance was below par, at best good
enough to
get
by. He liked flying, but didn't love it." Timberg counts himself
a
friend of
McCain and has written a McCain biography.
It wasn't long after arriving in Pensacola that McCain racked
up the
first
of his five crashes, beginning in 1958, on his way to becoming a
"reverse
ace." As told by Timberg, "McCain was practicing landings; his
engine
quit
and he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay. Knocked unconscious by
the
impact, he
came to as the plane settled to the bottom."
There was, however, no engine failure with the aircraft.
According to
one of
McCain's former flight instructors, "The engine was removed from
the
aircraft
that afternoon, mounted on a test stand and a new propeller
installed.
[It]
was flushed with fresh water and started. It ran just fine. So
the
theory of
engine failure was proven false."
The instructor added that McCain was "positively one of the
weakest
students
to pass our way, and received consistently poor marks and a
number of
Dangerous Down grades assigned by more than one instructor. He
had no
real
ability and was clearly out of his element in an airplane, and
way over
his
head even as a junior naval officer."
The second of McCain's crashes occurred while he was deployed
in the
Mediterranean. "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula,"
reports
Timberg,
"he took out some power lines [reminiscent of the 1998 incident
in which
a
Marine Corps jet sliced through the cables of a gondola at an
Italian
ski
resort, killing 20] which led to a spate of newspaper stories in
which
he was
predictably identified as the son of an admiral."
Crash three occurred when McCain was returning from flying a
trainer
solo to
Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. According to
Timberg,
McCain
radioed, "I've got a flameout." He went through the standard
relight
procedures three times. At one thousand feet, he ejected,
landing on the
deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of
trees."
By 1967, McCain was ready for battle and assigned to the USS
Forrestal
as an
A-4 Skyhawk pilot. While seated in the cockpit of his aircraft
waiting
for
takeoff, a freak accident occurred when a rocket slammed into
the
exterior
fuel tank of McCain's plane. Miraculously, McCain escaped from
the
burning
aircraft, but dozens of his shipmates were killed and injured in
the
explosions that followed.
McCain's final downing came just three months later when his
A-4
Skyhawk was
hit by antiaircraft artillery over Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi,
North
Vietnam.
McCain spent the next five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war
and,
upon
return to the United States in 1973, like the other returning
POWs,
McCain
became an instant hero. The POWs had been treated abominably,
yet stood
up to
their torturers and were deserving of the accolades they
received. But
some
questioned the number and types of medals bestowed upon "Ace"
McCain,
the son
of the admiral commanding in the Pacific as well as the grandson
of
another
admiral.
"McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat," explains Bill Bell, a
veteran
of
Vietnam and chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs - the
first
official
U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon.
"Since
McCain
got 28 medals," Bell continues, "that equals out to about a
medal-and-a-half
for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys -
grunts on
the
ground - who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell
you that
there were times and situations where I'm sure a prison cell
would have
looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is
how
many
guys got that number of medals for not being shot down."
"John McCain," says another Navy pilot and acquaintance of that
era,
"was
the kind of guy you wanted to room with - not fly with. He was
reckless,
and
that's critical when you start thinking about who's going to be
the
president." The old pilot laughs, and then continues: "But the
Navy
accident
rate was cut in half the day John McCain was shot down."
On a more serious note, however, there has been no discussion
of what
actions were or were not taken in dealing with McCain after each
of the
aircraft losses. Neither McCain's senatorial nor campaign
offices
returned
Insight's calls on these matters. But a Navy insider notes that
"after
every
such incident an inquiry is conducted to conclude the cause of
the
crash. If
it were anyone other than the admiral's son, his wings would
have been
pulled. But that's where that kind of father comes in handy."
"Thank God not all pilots are like McCain," jokes another
pilot, "or
the
government would be buying a hell of a lot more planes."
http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200002276.shtml>
