re: Does everyone know McCain crashed 5 military aircraft?

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Fire

While preparing for the second sortie of the day, the aft portion of the flight deck was packed wing-to-wing with 12 A-4E Skyhawk, seven F-4B Phantom II, and two Vigilante aircraft. A total of 27 aircraft were on deck, fully loaded with bombs, rockets, ammunition, and fuel. Several tons of bombs were stored on wooden pallets on deck in the bomb farm.[15] A McDonnell Douglas F-4B Phantom (No. 110, BuNo 153061), flown by LCDR James E. Bangert and LT(JG) Lawrence E. McKay from VF-11,[1] was positioned on the aft starboard corner of the deck, pointing about 45 degrees across the ship.[1] It was armed with LAU-10 underwing rocket pods, each containing four unguided 5.0 in (127.0 mm) Mk-32 "Zuni" rockets. The Zuni was protected from launching by a safety pin that was only to be removed prior to launch from the catapult.[10][6]:57

Zuni rocket launched

At about 10:51 (local time) on 29 July, an electrical power surge in the Phantom occurred during the switch from external to internal power. The electrical surge caused one of the four 5-inch Mk-32 Zuni unguided rockets in a pod on external stores station 2 (port inboard station) to fire.[12] The rocket was later determined to be missing the rocket safety pin, allowing the rocket to launch.[10] The rocket flew about 100 feet (30 m) across the flight deck, likely severing the arm of a crewman, and ruptured a 400 US gallons (1,500 l; 330 imp gal) wing-mounted external fuel tank on a Skyhawk from VA-46 awaiting launch.[1][16][6]:34, 93

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