John McCain - Legends of Airpower 201

He was the son and grandson of Navy admirals who served their country with distinction. Growing up, he had no doubts that his future lay in the Navy as well. He attended the Naval Academy, compiling a record memorable for its lack of academic distinction and for the trouble he caused. His career as a naval aviator got off to an inauspicious start when sitting in the cockpit of his plane on the deck of the USS Forrestal, the plane exploded beneath him. He barely escaped with his life, given the chance to come home. He instead requested assignment to another combat squadron. Only three months later, he was shot down over North Vietnam. He spent more than five years in a prisoner of war camp where torture and years of solitary confinement did not break his spirit or his sense of duty. He returned an uncomfortable hero and struggled for another decade to find himself and his own way of serving his country. He is John McCain and he is a legend of air power. John Sidney McCain, the third, was born in the Panama Canal Zone on August 29th, 1936. His grandfather was Admiral John Sidney McCain, a 1906 graduate of the Naval Academy and a stalwart of the coal fired navy of the early 20th century. Admiral McCain served on the Battleship Connecticut in President Theodore Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, which circled the globe to show America's new ability to project its power globally. His dedication to the future of naval power was extreme, and at the age of 52, he qualified as an aircraft carrier pilot. He later served as a carrier commander during World War Two and stood on the deck of the USS Missouri as the Japanese surrendered. McCain's father, John Sidney Jr, entered the Naval Academy at the ripe old age of 16 and received this commission in 1931. A heart murmur kept him out of flight training, so he entered the submarine service instead. During World War Two, he commanded three different subs and sank several Japanese ships, including a destroyer at the end of the war. He sailed his submarine triumphantly into Tokyo Bay. He rose to the rank of four star admiral, and in his last posting at the height of the Vietnam War, commanded all American military forces in the Pacific. John Cindy McCain. The third was raised in a succession of Navy billets steeped in his father's dedication to naval service. He loved the Navy. He loved everything about it. He loved going to sea and ships. And he had a total commitment and dedication to the Navy. And I think deep down, his family came second because of his devotion to the Navy. But he was a very wonderful father, and we spent a lot of time together when he was when he was at home. And and we got along very well. From his earliest childhood, McCain's family assumed he would like his father and grandfather serve in the Navy. But through the 1950s, he seemed more James Dean than a naval hero in the making. He attended 20 schools as a youth moving from place to place as the Navy shuffled his father to different assignments everywhere he went. He rebelled against all manner of authority. Classmates at the Virginia boarding school his parents enrolled him in nicknamed him McNasty. I think the fact that my future was mapped out for me from the time I could talk was probably what started it in the I went to a boy's boarding school and the other guys I graduated with went to Ivy League schools or Southern schools, and I guess I you know, it's not that I didn't want to go to the Naval Academy. I just probably wished I'd had if I had the choice, I'm sure I would have chosen the naval Academy. I just resented probably not having the choice. McCain arrived at Annapolis, a kind of crowned prince of the Navy, and almost immediately established himself as a troublemaker. He ran up near-record totals of demerits and was one of the leaders of a group of midshipmen who called themselves the bad bunch. Their behavior was innocent by modern standards, but shocking at the time in its scorn for the puffed up self-importance of many of the upperclassman and officers around him. John nearly failed out of the academy and just barely squeaked by. But his father also just barely squeaked by as well. So it was a tradition in the family to not invest too much of your time, effort and treasure into trying to achieve high marks, but rather try to to get through the academy experience with the least amount of effort possible and enjoy yourself as much as possible. McCain graduated in 1958 and decided to be a pilot. Not so much out of any sense of calling, but because, as he often puts it, pilots were the guys with the new cars or the better looking girlfriends. He went to flight school at Pensacola. And while his rebellious streak may have been a handicap, a tradition bound Annapolis, it proved to be an asset in the much more intense world of naval aviation. You have to be very cocky and self-assured even to be a naval aviator, because especially during that time with the early jet technology, you really confronted death every day. Just the mere process of landing on a carrier was extremely risky. Though he continued to have disciplinary problems and was periodically confined to quarters for his diplomatic failures with superior officers, he was also an outstanding pilot, and he knew that like his father and grandfather before him, he would have to prove himself in combat. After completing his training, he volunteered for action in the growing war in Vietnam. I was a profession naval aviator. I was out to do the job that I was told to do and trained to do. In 1967, the Navy ship McCain Squadron of A-4 skyhawks to the USS Forrestal, an aircraft carrier parked in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. It was the height of Operation Rolling Thunder, a campaign in a bombardment that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara believed would bring the war to an end. Every day, hundreds of American aircraft converged over North Vietnam, and every day a few of those aircraft did not return home. John McCain arrived in Vietnam during the heat of the summer of 1967. He had been there only a short time when he learned a life changing lesson in the horrors of combat operations. We were launching one of our first major strikes about 30 airplanes were all going in to strike a target in around Haiphong, as I remember. And the planes are lined up along the edges of the flight deck and then a group of planes are in the back of the flight deck. When you're getting ready to launch by a terrible error the which I won't go into the detail of the Zuni rocket was fired from the wing of an F-4 came across the flight deck and went through the 300 gallon fuel tank underneath my airplane, punched through it. The fuel spilled out on fire and spread all around the flight deck. McCain escaped by climbing out on the fuel probe at the nose of his A-4 and diving into the flames. He rolled to safety, protected by his heavy flight gear. But all around him, aircraft heavy with bombs were catching fire. He had escaped from the fire only to find himself in the frying pan. The hot metal deck of the Forrestal, one of the most powerful ships in the world, was a sea of spreading flames. The ship was in deep trouble, hampered by inadequate damage control, equipment and training. It took the crew of the Forrestal 12 hours of hard fighting to bring the fire under control and the full 24 hours to put the fire out. 134 sailors died in the blaze, many sacrificing themselves to help save the ship. The crew of the fast fought that fire with some of the greatest examples of heroism, sacrifice. I think we've ever seen in the history of the Navy. And they saved the ship. McCain, one of the walking wounded, reported to sickbay in search of bandages for his burns. There he walked into a scene unlike anything he had seen before. Below decks, injured and dying sailors awaited treatment and evacuation. I walked in and there was a lot of young men laying there very badly burned. And I heard one of them call to me and I went over. He was one of our plane captains and he was terribly burned. And he asked about one of the pilots and I said, well, was fine. He made it through. And he said, Who was the pilot of the plane? That he was the plane captain of? And I said, he's fine. He said, thank God died right there. McCain recuperated in the Philippines. He was, he says, now inspired by the sacrifice of the crew of the Forrestal, by the pride they showed in their work and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. Though his injuries had earned him an exemption from combat and a trip home. He instead volunteered to return to battle. I was 31 years old at the time. I had been Navy and Naval Aviator since I was 21, and I was that was my business. The Navy assigned McCain to the USS Oriskany. The Vietnam War aboard American aircraft carriers was an almost surreal mixture of onboard gentility, punctuated by terrifying forays into some of the hardest combat situations ever known. Not only were they facing a devastating and effective new of aircraft weapon, the surface to air missile, they were operating under rules of engagement that seemed to take into account everything except the well-being of American pilots in an attempt to keep the Russians and Chinese from escalating the war. American planners forbade attacking certain logical targets. Naturally, the North Vietnamese loaded those forbidden zones with war, materiel and even air defenses. One time, one of our pilots was shot down in Haiphong. Another pilot bombed where he thought the antiaircraft fire came from. And because we weren't supposed to bomb and side high inside of Haiphong, he was in trouble. Well, that's not. That's not right. When McCain returned to combat, he returned to an increasingly difficult environment. New restrictions multiplied even as the North Vietnamese increased the capabilities of their air defenses. Johnson and his advisers in the Joint Chiefs chose the targets on a day to day basis, not the operators and it was a limited bombing campaign. His idea was not to strike the most valuable targets, but to hold back on the valuable targets, hoping that the Vietnamese would win. Fear that those valuable targets would be destroyed unless they capitulate. The North Vietnamese, of course, fought on protect it, at least in part by Lyndon Johnson's unwillingness to admit that limiting a war scope does nothing to hasten its end. Less than three months after the fire on the USS Forrestal, John McCain suited up for his 23rd combat mission over enemy territory. He was compared to many around him, a pilot of limited experience who made up for his shortcomings with a drive and enthusiasm, wisdom that seemed infectious. It was a major strike on for the first time on a target downtown Hanoi, the thermal power plant in Hanoi. And there was about 26 airplanes and we took off and rendezvoused. And then the we came in south of Hanoi and then turned and came back in so that when we pulled off the target, we'd be headed back towards the Gulf of Tonkin. Three concentric rings of air defenses protected Hanoi, including both anti aircraft artillery and surface to air missiles. As McCain came in over his target, U.S. aircraft indicated it was being tracked by at least one SAM site. It's fairly easy to avoid one surface to air missile or even two. You can do it. But when you've got seven, eight, ten in the air, once it gets a little more interesting. McCain continued his attack focused on the target and his mission. He had just dropped his bombs when a missile took one of the wings off his airplane. He ejected almost instantly, breaking an arm and knee on the way out of the cramped cockpit. He landed in a lake near the center of Hanoi. A large number of people pulled me out of the lake after having some difficulty inflating my life vest because my arms being broken and they dragged me up on the shore. They began beating me and bayoneted my foot and and in my groin and smashed my shoulder with a rifle. But the North Vietnamese didn't know it yet, but they had captured a prize. John Sidney McCain, the third was not just any pilot. He was the son of the admiral in command of all American forces in the Pacific. McCain was about to feel the weight of his family's naval heritage in a way he could never have imagined before. The North Vietnamese did not think of captured American pilots as prisoners of war. Rather, in a justification that is as morally questionable as it is legally indefensible, they declared American fliers to be war criminals, which allowed them, in their own view, to handle fliers without regard for any of the Geneva Conventions. Badly injured from his ejection. Badly beaten by his captors, John McCain was taken to the old French prison at the center of Hanoi that had been converted to hold captured Americans. Known as the Hanoi Hilton. The prison was infamous for its cruelty. The Communists wanted information. In particular, they wanted confessions of war crimes against the North Vietnamese that could be used as propaganda both in the United States and around the world. They would go to any links to extract those confessions. And Americans held in the Hanoi Hilton were routinely tortured, sometimes to death. I think when you're in a situation like that, you don't wonder whether you're going to live or die. You sort of try to hang on for several days after his arrival, the North Vietnamese kept McCain on a stretcher, denying him medical treatment. They attempted to interrogate him, but he was in such bad shape that his response to questions was to simply pass out on the third or fourth day of his captivity. McCain's captors called in a doctor who took one look at the flier and said that it was too late, that he was going to die. And then a few hours later, the cell opened and interrogator guy we knew of call the bob came in and said, Your father's a big admiral and we're going to take you to the hospital. So it really saved my life. The fact they found out who my father was, it also singled him out for particularly harsh treatment. The North Vietnamese knew that if they could get McCain against the war, they could reap the propaganda coup of all time. But McCain, who had long resisted even the minor exertion of authority at the Naval Academy, resisted even more fiercely the life and death power of his Communist captors. The Communists tried to get him to pose for pictures with actress Jane Fonda when she visited Hanoi. McCain refused. The whole thing I resented about Miss Fonda's behavior was when she sat in an anti aircraft gun emplacement and said something like she wished that she could also shoot down an air pilot or something like that. We thought that was over the line. But frankly, it didn't bother us as much as you might think. I mean, after all, she's a movie actress. They offered to send him home early as a Goodwill gesture to his father, intensely aware of his family's heritage, of honor and of his own duty to his fellow captives. McCain refused, saying he would accept no special treatment. Frustrated, the North Vietnamese locked McCain in solitary confinement for two and a half years. McCain was alone. Communications. Communications are the most important thing. Tapping on the walls and keeping in contact. It really is the key to it, because as long as you feel it, we're all in it together. Then you can survive and resist. That's why the Vietnamese kept us in those conditions for so long. In solitary confinement or two or three to a room is so that they could wear people down. And in many ways, it's effective. Outside the war raged on. Back home, the public will to fight broke before the spirit of the P.O.W. is denied. Like many of the captives, McCain eventually signed a confession of the obvious that he had flown missions against the North, that he had bombed, that he had been, in effect, at war. Though technically a violation of the military code of conduct, the confessions were not seen by the P.O.W.s themselves, including their ranking officer and Medal of Honor recipient James Stockdale, as anything but a way of saving your own life. I think the more important issue with with the P.O.W.s is once you did sign that confession, how how fast, how quickly did you bounce back and again, assume a resistance posture? And according to Stockdale, that was that was the important thing. In 1973, the American involvement in the war ended and the imprisoned pilots were released. Unlike most Vietnam veterans, they returned home amid much fanfare and celebration. It took me about 45 minutes to to put the prison experience behind me. I mean, I, I have fond memories of those I served with and wonderful friendships. I had the rest of it I just put behind me. And I think that that's what almost all of us did. McCain returned so badly damaged that he could not resume his career as a naval aviator. He studied at the War College, was a flight instructor, and in 1977 took the job as the Navy's liaison to the United States Senate. A job his father had held 20 years earlier. It was clear at that point that his Navy career had stalled. His war injuries precluded. His command and his tendency to buck authority didn't endear him to the Navy brass, though. Both his father and grandfather had risen to four star Admiral ranks. Captain McCain was passed over for promotion. He considered making politics his full time job. He enjoyed Washington. And his gregarious personality seemed to suit the political world. He had formed close friendships with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and had become a well-known and emotionally moving speaker on the Republican fundraising circuit. In 1981, his father died, freeing him, in a sense, from his naval legacy. On the day of his father's funeral, McCain signed his final discharge papers, resigning his commission and the Navy, a man who had known no real home but the Navy. He moved to his wife's home in the Arizona desert there, far from the sea. He put down roots. John McCain's experiment with politics was, of course, successful. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982. And when Barry Goldwater retired, McCain ran for and won a seat in the United States Senate. His political career, like his time in the Navy, is marked by a distinct tendency to go his own way. He is no better at toeing the Republican line than he was at adhering to outmoded traditions of the Naval