On Oct 12, 2008, at 7:54 AM, Mugsy Lunsford wrote: > At 5:29 PM -0500 10/10/08, richardsan san said: >> On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 5:19 PM, Michael Luscombe > >> Not everyone who talks to a communist or communist sympathizer >> becomes a communist. If that were the case, wouldn't John McCain >> want to run the country like Vietnam? Some sensible >> characterization of those meetings is in order. Plenty of >> Republicans worked with Bill Ayers as well. >> >> mccain has at least a 5 year history of communicating with >> communists. didn't he give them more than just name,rank and serial >> number? > > I was on a work crew with a Nam vet this week, and got an earful > over lunch one afternoon when someone made a joking comment about > the election. Seems the vet was on the Forrestal when the missile > went off and killed 134 crewmen, and a lot of his fellow survivors > were convinced that McCain was responsible for that incident - I > didn't understand all of what he said since he became quite > passionate while reliving the scene, and began speaking in military > acronyms. Something about fooling around with afterburners and a > flareout touching off the missile. This vet closed his rant with an > assurance that he was also certain that McCain's plane was fragged > out of the sky by his peers who were tired of his risky behavior. > I'd been listening with shock probably showing on my face, and he > turned to me and said "Fragged! Do you know what that means, to be > fragged? It means your own side thinks you don't deserve to live!" > The rest of us simply listened, dumb-founded. That's the first I've > heard of any of that, but the guy was extremely serious and very > very angry, kept referring to McCain as "Songbird." Got up and > stormed off after he finished talking, and the rest of the crew > agreed to avoid talking about politics around him. I keep meaning > to ask a pilot about this, since I don't understand how the missile > could have been set off like that in the first place.
The A-4 aircraft that McCain was flying over Vietnam (and may others of that period) did not have self-starting engines. A small jet engine in a cart was used to get the turbines of the aircraft turning so the engine could be ignited. What happened on the Forrestal is that a starter cart was being used on an aircraft across the flight deck from McCain's aircraft. The exhaust from the starter cart was blowing on an air-to-air missile on another aircraft and the missile "cooked-off", its engine ignited from the heat of the starter cart. That missile flew across the deck and hit McCain's aircraft starting the fire and causing it to drop its bombs into the flames which in turn cooked off and exploded causing more fire and damage to other aircraft, etc. I am no fan of McCain but he was in no way responsible for what happened on the Forrestal. <http://www.forrestal.org/fidfacts/page13.htm> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "StrataList-OT" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/StrataList-OT?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
