@sneakypete Neither Trump nor anyone else I have ever seen or talked to has denigrated McLunatic for getting shot down, although he DOES have a record of extreme carelessness.
First, I was referring specifically to this comment by Trump:
“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
I think that comment is despicable. James Stockdale received the Medal of Honor for his actions in a North Vietnamese POW camp. Jeremiah Denton -- the guy who blinked "torture" -- got the Navy Cross. But Trump likes people who weren't captured better. I think that comment is an insult to everyone who ever had to endure being a POW because it implies they somehow served less honorably. McCain was a crappy officer, but at least he had the guts to turn down the repeated NVA offers for early release because he was an Admiral's kid.
The fire he started aboard ship while waiting to take off is the prime example of this. Admiral's boy who knew he wouldn't get in trouble,even if his fratboy antics caused a ships fire that MAY have sank it if the deck crew hadn't got the fire under control.
I'm not sure where you heard that, but that isn't even close to being true. He wasn't a good flight officer in general, but he was blameless in the
Forrestal fire. I spent an entire week in damage control/leadership studying the
Forrestal (referred to after that incident as the "Forest Fire") fire, and McCain had
nothing to do with how the fire started or progressed. Without going into all the details, there was a power surge that caused one of the crappy MK32 Zuni rockets mounted on an F-4 to fire because it was missing its safety pin. That wouldn't have been the fault of the pilot anyway, but it wasn't even McCain's plane. He was an A-6 guy. That rocket fired, hit an A-6 (Differing accounts and to which A-6 it hit -- McCain's or someone else's) , and ruptured the fuel tank on that aircraft. JP-5 spilled all over the deck. The rocket didn't explode, but it did start a fire in the fuel spilling on the deck. The aircrews all followed DC protocol, which at that time had specifically-designated firefighting teams, and fled the area as the DC team came up to put the fire out.
Normally, the fire would have been extinguished easily. The problem was that the ship had recently received some badly corroded and unsafe 1000lbs bombs, and they cooked off much more quickly than they should have. When they went, that's what really started things.
None of that was McCain's fault.
As far as anything
else McCain did, that's all fair game. I just thought Trump's comment about "I like people who weren't captured" insulted a hell of a lot more men than just McCain.
