Of course it was
And not one single finding was logged of anyone responsible in any way whatsoever for 134 deaths, 160 injuries and $72 million in damage
Astoundingly merciful treatment of an entire ship complement and all higher brass by a navy that would strip an officer of his career for ....
Unless of course naming even one officer responsible in any way would have required release of far more details of the chain of events, leading to...
That was bad enough, but then he ran down below deck, while all the others ran to help. He watched what was happening on video!
Subsequently, left the ship with a reporter for some R and R.
What kind of a person does that??/
That is the REAL Mr. McCain.
Hehehe...yeah..that’s how it goes................
Poor safety procedures and a safety pin that was known to pull out due to wind on the ribbon.
These are facts. I’m not saying that McCain wasn’t a fkcup, but without regard to his bombs, the incident was not his fault and the bombs were hardly a contributing factor: They would have cooked off on the wing regardless, with the flames fanned by 35 knot winds...without which we wouldn’t be having this discussion (McCain would likely have died in the inferno).
The accident was a coalescing of impossible odds due to one bad decision on top of another, including old/leaking, thin-skinned munitions, unsecure safety pins on the Zuni rocket pods and procedures modified to fully-arm the rockets while the aircraft were still aft and pointed inboard at each other.
There were other contributing factors, but it is still unbelievable to me that McDonnell Douglas had no idea that there was transient current during switchover from external to internal power on a Phantom.
An accident was inevitable. Unfortunately rather than being pointed over the bow on the catapult, the F4 was pointed at a Skyhawk.
A hellstorm from that point was a foregone conclusion.
You want blame, I blame the weapons officers who capitulated to the pilots to violate safety procedures.
Never should have happened. The officer who approved the change should have been hung out to dry, and it certainly wasn’t pilot John McCain.