Was this the second or third plane he lost?
I don’t know.
I’m curious how his plane blowing up under him while on deck could in any way be construed as his fault.
From FactCheck.org:
McCain did lose two Navy aircraft while piloting them. One crash was found to be be McCain's fault, the other due to an engine failure of undetermined cause.. A third was destroyed on the deck of the carrier USS Forrestal when a missile fired accidentally from another plane hit either the plane next to McCain's or, less likely, his own aircraft, triggering a disastrous fire that killed 134 sailors and nearly killed McCain. A fourth plane was lost when he was shot down over North Vietnam on a bombing mission over Hanoi.A fifth alleged "crash" turns out to be a misinterpretation of a flight accident that did not result in the loss of the aircraft. McCain admitted to causing that incident through "daredevil clowning" but returned safely.
I don't know what official Navy rules are, but it doesn't seem quite fair to describe the aircraft that was blown to pieces after it was engulfed in a massive fire caused by a missile launched from another pilot's machine as a plane McCain "lost."
There have been many comments here at FR over the years to the effect that any pilot who had an aircraft loss charged to him (as McCain did, according to the FactCheck writeup) would have been washed out of the program, and that the only reason that didn't happen to McCain was because of his family connections in the Navy.
Was this the second or third plane he lost?
Best I can tell, this was the FOURTH airplane he lost: the first crashed in training, the second one he flew into a power line in Spain (I believe), the third lost an engine (he claimed) and crashed after he ejected, this one blew up on the aircraft carrier flight deck, and he won his ace when the North Vietnamese hit it with a SAM.