The vet Mugsy quoted obviously had a major bias against McCain and his account totally disagrees with every other account I've ever seen. There is no way in hell McCain could have fired a wing mounted missile into his own aircraft's centerline fuel tank.
I've explained the discrepancies in the accounts of how the missile got fired. Early reports suggested it was an electrical malfunction or surge of some sort. Later investigations reported that the missile was cooked off by a starter cart. I chose the latter explanation. Regardless of how the missile got launched (Was the F-4 pilot trying to frag McCain? How's that for conspiracy theories. ;-) ) the fact remains that McCain was not responsible for the accident and that was the thrust of my reply to Mugsy's message. The History Channel runs a documentary on the Forrestal fire every so often. You might want to watch it the next time it comes on. It is very interesting. The heroism of those who fought the fire is absolutely amazing. A whole fire hose team will get killed when a bomb explodes and another 5 guys rush in immediately to pick the hose up and continue fighting the fire. It happens repeatedly. If it had not the ship and all aboard would have been lost. It was a hellacious inferno on that flight deck that day. The Japanese lost a carrier at Midway due to the same circumstances - we caught them in the middle of refueling and rearming their aircraft for another attack and the aircraft carrier was sunk more from the damage caused by their own armaments than by the 2 or 3 bombs we managed to get dropped onto it. Had we hit it with an empty flight deck it most likely would not have been sunk. As for eyewitness accounts, why do you only give credence to those who blame McCain and ignore all the rest which show it wasn't his fault? Partisanship has no place in recounting of history. As I've said every time this topic has come up - I'm not a McCain supporter but there is no way he is responsible for what happened on the Forrestal any more than Obama is responsible for the actions of Bill Ayers. You don't support what I would consider to be slander of one of our candidates for president, why should slander of the other be allowed? If you don't like slander, how about distortions of their records? Either way they are lies and should not be spread especially when they are so easily refuted. That's my opinion, you are free to disagree. -- Brian On Oct 12, 2008, at 11:08 AM, richardsan san wrote: > there is the [purported] account by an eyewitness > there is the account you wrote > then the account you linked us to > and the previous account. > wiki says > unusual electrical anomaly discharged a Zuni rocket > > there, there are 5 accounts. some with details, and some without. i > can lend some credence to eye witnessing, that's acceptable, right? > > the link you sent us to, didn't substantiate the story in your post. > it didn't say anything about missiles being accidently lit from > engine starters and firing. from the vet's story mugsy related in > her post, it's substantially different than the accounts that you > relayed. > > in light of some of the actions of the military higher ups, it's not > a big leap to think they do not always depict things as they really > happen/ed. > unfortunately, the military brass has a long standing history of > faux pas, that account for much tragic loss of innocent lives. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
