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Other than his plane being ordered spotted in the impact area of the rocket, McCain had nothing to do with the cause of the carrier fire or the outcome. That said I have no use for him due to his actions in elected office. The Forestall fire was a tragedy and shouldn’t be used to incorrectly smear McCain. Look at the spotting chart about half way down on the right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

The thing about his other mishap is that mishaps at that time were treated a lot different. There was a trainee pilot in the early 1960s that crashed an F-100 while performing a loop. Plane stalled upside down right that top of the loop. The plane was totally out of control. There was insufficient altitude to recover, so the pilot punched. Cause of the stall? The instructor pilot taught the trainee a technique that was unauthorized and ill-advised to fly a loop. The only thing said to the student was by another instructor complaining that he crashed his favorite jet because it had the best radar set. The instructor got chewed out by the wing commander and was on the flight schedule the next day.

Crashes were handled a lot different back then. The worst year for F-100 crashes was 1958, with 116 jets destroyed and 47 pilots killed.