That is one of the reasons some of McCain's shipmates point the finger at McCain.
They say McCain "wet started" his jet. As I understand it, that is when you flood your engines with fuel and then start it which sends out a plume of flames.
Apparently this was not a totally uncommon practice.
I understand the incident was investigated by the Navy and McCain was absolved of all charges but he was still transferred to another ship afterwards.
Perhaps that was a common practice, too. I don't know. I do know that McCain's father was some Navy hotshot at the time.
Not that that should arouse suspicion or anthing.
The disaster started when a Zuni rocket onboard an F-4 Phantom parked across the flightdeck accidentally fired. It hit the aircraft parked next to McCain, ruptured a fuel tank and started the fire. McCain's aircraft had nothing at all to do with it.
After the fire the Forrestal was headed for the yards for repair. McCain transferred to a squadron on the Oriskany which was headed for Vietnam. Had he remained with his original squadron in the states he would not have been shot down and captured 3 months later. Are you criticizing him for that?
Who are these "they" that you attribute that tinfoil nonsense to?
I understand the incident was investigated by the Navy and McCain was absolved of all charges but he was still transferred to another ship afterwards.
As were a number of pilots and enlisted men serving in CVAG-17 because the Forrestal was out of commission for 207 days being repaired. McCain was transferred to VA-163 embarked on the Oriskany arriving on 30 September 1967 and shortly thereafter got himself shot down on 26 October 1967.
I do know that McCain's father was some Navy hotshot at the time.
CINCUSNAVEUR. You would have thought that the "hotshot" could have pulled some strings to keep his son out of harms way.
Apparently, it slowed down the workflow enough to find a time and place to remove the pins in accordance with the approved procedures that it really did slow down the pace of the launch.
They got an approved workaround to pull the safety pins out before they started the engines (IIRC, someone can correct me if I am wrong) and when they started the engines, pulled the plug and flipped the switch to transfer from external power to internal power (now generated by the smoking J-79's on the Phantom) that there was some stray voltage somewhere that was generated.
That voltage that nobody knew about would have been stopped by the safety pins on the MER/SER, but since they had been pulled, the path to the ordinance was open, even though the master arm switch was off, and...SWOOSH.
That zuni rocket flew across the flight deck, severed a deck hand's arm, and smashed into McCain's 1000 lb centerline drop tank, and fuel began gushing onto the flight deck. Something ignited it (my memory tells me it was not the zuni, which I believe went all the way through it and into the ocean beyond) and the rest is history.
McCain was lucky to survive that. He could have gone up just like some other pilots nearby who never got out of their cockpits.
A great book that I read about this is: "Sailors to The End"
Heh, as for the "Wet Start", that is NOT something people did for fun. It could happen accidentally due to an equipment or an engine malfunction, or it could be caused by pilot or operator error, but I doubt someone would get away with doing it a bunch of times. I was a jet mechanic, and had to get my turn license in order to perform maintenance, and that was one of the things that could get you a fail if you didn't recognize it and turned a wet start into a hot start. You could destroy the plane and get people killed. (Caveat: I worked on A-7 Corsairs, and it is possible the A-4 Skyhawk had a bigger problem with it, but I think the process of avoiding it was pretty much the same across platforms)
That might happen as an accident, and most people might be inclined to overlook it, but if someone did it repeatedly, they would damn well hear about it, including the son of famous admirals. In any case, I don't believe that had anything to do with it.
(For full disclosure, McCain was my Commanding officer for a few months when I was in a training squadron, and after I got out of the training squadron, I did get sent to the VA-46 Clansmen, which was the squadron that McCain was flying in when that happened. But I think what I have said is correct...)