McCain's five lost planes

It's quite true that McCain lost five jets in military service. However, 
that doesn't prove he did anything wrong. However, a close reading of how
he 
lost five planes tells a quite interesting story. For reasons that will 
become clear, the story is best told in reverse order.

  5. On Oct. 26, 1967 John McCain was shot down over Vietnam and ended up
as 
a POW in North Vietnam. It was his 23rd mission over North Vietnam.

  [It's hard to remember these days, when we lose so very few jets in
combat 
(because we developed around 1980 the technology to blind the enemy by 
knocking out his ground radar while we control the aerial battlefield from

Airborne Warning and Control System jets almost over the horizon) that we 
lost 3,322 fixed-win aircraft in the Vietnam war, perhaps the majority due

to enemy fire.]

  4. On July 29, 1967 his plane was destroyed by a missile accidentally 
fired by another plane waiting to take off. He barely survived. 134
sailors 
died that day. There is no evidence that McCain did anything wrong. The 
videos of the fires and explosions are astoni****ng. The first fire crew
was 
wiped out by a bomb explosion and was replaced by volunteers in seconds. 
Subsequent explosions wiped out the replacement firemen. Tragically, the 
volunteers didn't know how to fight a carrier fire and made the situation 
worse.

  3. In 1965, he lost a plane flying home from the Army-Navy game due to 
mechanical failure. This was very common at the time. I once met a Vietnam

pilot who lost a Phantom due to oil pressure failure. I asked what the 
consequences were. He said that his commanding officer was upset for 10 
minutes and he had to fill out a form.

  2. He lost a plane after hitting power line over the Iberian Peninsula. 
Presumably pilot era.

  1. As a student pilot he lost a plane in Corpus Christi bay while trying

to land.

  The last 3 losses do not reflect adversely on John McCain. How about the

first two? I would question whether any aviator whose name wasn't McCain 
would have survived losing a plane as a student and then hitting power 
lines.

  See 
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/cin_mccain_lost_five_u.htm

  For some details. There are also a few books about McCain out there. See

http://www.amazon.com/Nightingales-Song-Robert-Timberg/dp/0684826739

  How do the last three lost planes not reflect poorly on McCain?

  Did pilots of this era typically lose 3 planes most likely due to their 
own arrogance or incompetence given the clear pattern here and his well 
do***ented arrogance?

  Did the Navy not care that McCain repeatedly lost tens of millions of 
dollars in planes? Was it typical for pilots to be given 3 such mulligans 
with nothing but 10mins of paperwork?

  How was it that someone so poorly disciplined, insubordinate and 
academically dismal at the academy even become a pilot in the first place?

  28 medals for 20hr of combat flying? 1.5 Medals per hour of flight
mission 
sounds as dubious as the entire McCain hero storyline. 
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/cin_mccain_lost_five_u.htm