John McCain, War Hero.
The Los Angeles Times came out with a pretty scathing report today noting the inconvenient truth that John McCain was an absolutely terrible pilot. The article details three plane crashes early in the career of our fearless ”knows how to win wars” maverick, and blamed the crashes on the reckless behavior of a cavalier McCain.
The Times interviewed men who served with McCain and located once-confidential 1960s-era accident reports and formerly classified evaluations of his squadrons during the Vietnam War. This examination of his record revealed a pilot who early in his career was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits.
In today’s military, a lapse in judgment that causes a crash can end a pilot’s career. Though standards were looser and crashes more frequent in the 1960s, McCain’s record stands out.”Three mishaps are unusual,” said Michael L. Barr, a former Air Force pilot with 137 combat missions in Vietnam and an internationally known aviation safety expert who teaches in USC’s Aviation Safety and Security Program. “After the third accident, you would say: Is there a trend here in terms of his flying skills and his judgment?”
Jeremiah Pearson, a Navy officer who flew 400 missions over Vietnam without a mishap and later became the head of human spaceflight at NASA, said: “That’s a lot. You don’t want any. Maybe he was just unlucky.”
Our favorite crash? Wikipedia notes that “In 1961, McCain’s ‘clowning around’ in southern Spanish skies caused a local electrical blackout when he flew his plane into transmission lines.” John Sidney McCain why do you hate Spain so much!? Goddamned Zapatero.
There were six crashes total, one of which left him in captivity for 5 years not that he would ever use that politically or anything.
Most of these details have been out there for some time now but they have gone unreported. The article today seems to be part of a shifting narrative that is looking at McCain as erratic and unstable, which he is. Still on a day where McCain has an outrageous ad up attacking Obama for “disrespecting” the troops (when McCain himself has a terrible record on veterans issues) it’s nice to see a little ink given over to one half of that “team of Mavericks” and how maybe he was a showboater, not a hero.
About The Author - Ben Wyskida is a writer, activist, conscientious hedonist and political communications strategist living in Brooklyn. - Visit Ben's site.
Well for 5 1/2 years he had a clean flying record…
A little chunk from the McCain article in Rolling Stone right now…
This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.
In its broad strokes, McCain’s life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers’ powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives’ evangelical churches.
In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.
That RS story is SO good. Jan Wenner is going for it …
Thanks for posting this. Go Jann!