Επ ευκαιρίας των Αμερικανικών εκλογών παραθέτω την πολεμική δράση του Μακ Κέιν. Το κειμενο ειναι στα αγγλικα. Ο τυπος την εχει γλιτώσει απο απίστευτα περιστατικα.
Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, McCain entered the United States Naval Academy in 1954.
Each year he was given over 100 demerits (for unshined shoes, formation faults, talking out of place, and the like).
Despite his difficulties, he later wrote that he never wavered in his desire to show his father and family that he was of the same mettle as his naval forbears.
Dropping out was unthinkable, and so he successfully completed his training and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958; he was sixth from the bottom in class rank, 894th out of 899.
McCain was then commissioned an ensign, and spent two and a half years as a naval aviator in training at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas, flying A-1 Skyraiders.
He earned a reputation as a party man, as he drove a Corvette, dated an exotic dancer named "Marie the Flame of Florida", and, as he would later say, "generally misused my good health and youth."
He began as a subpar flier, with limited patience for studying aviation manuals.
CLOSE CALL No1
During a practice run in Texas, his engine quit while landing, and his aircraft crashed into Corpus Christi Bay, though he escaped without major injuries.
He graduated from flight school in 1960, and became a naval pilot of attack aircraft.
McCain was then stationed in A-1 Skyraider squadrons on the aircraft carriers USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise, in the Caribbean Sea and in several deployments to the Mediterranean Sea.
He was on alert duty on Enterprise when it imposed a blockade and quarantine of Cuba during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
CLOSE CALL No2
His aviation skills improved, but he had another close call when he and his plane emerged intact from a collision with power lines, after flying too low over Spain.
He was rotated back to shore duty, serving as a flight instructor at Naval Air Station Meridian in Mississippi.
CLOSE CALL No3
In December 1965, he had his third close call when a flameout over Norfolk, Virginia led to his ejecting safely, and his plane crashed.
McCain grew frustrated with his training role, and requested a combat assignment.
In December 1966, McCain was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, flying A-4 Skyhawks with the VA-46 "Clansmen"
In Spring 1967, Forrestal was assigned to join Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
McCain's first five attack missions over North Vietnam went without incident, and while still unconcerned with minor Navy regulations, McCain had by now garnered the reputation of a serious aviator.
CLOSE CALL No4
By then a Lieutenant Commander, McCain was again almost killed in action on July 29, 1967 while serving on Forrestal, operating at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin.
The crew was preparing to launch attacks, when a Zuni rocket from an F-4 Phantom was accidentally fired across the carrier's deck.
The rocket struck McCain's A-4E Skyhawk as the jet was preparing for launch.
The impact ruptured the Skyhawk's fuel tank, which ignited the fuel and knocked two bombs loose.
McCain escaped from his jet by climbing out of the cockpit, working himself to the nose of the jet, and jumping off its refueling probe onto the burning deck of the aircraft carrier.
Ninety seconds after the impact, one of the bombs exploded underneath his airplane.
McCain was struck in the legs and chest by shrapnel.
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The ensuing fire killed 132 sailors, injured 62 others, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and took 24 hours to control.
A day or two after the conflagration, McCain told New York Times reporter R. W. Apple, Jr. in Saigon that, "It's a difficult thing to say. But now that I've seen what the bombs and the napalm did to the people on our ship, I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam."
But such a change of course was unlikely; as McCain said, "I always wanted to be in the Navy. I was born into it and I never really considered another profession. But I always had trouble with the regimentation."
As Forrestal headed for repairs, McCain volunteered to join the VA-163 "Saints" on board the short-staffed USS Oriskany. This ship had earlier endured its own deck fire disaster and its squadrons had suffered heavy losses during Rolling Thunder, with one-third of its pilots killed or captured during 1967.
McCain joined Oriskany on September 30, 1967, for a tour he expected would finish early the next summer.
CLOSE CALL No5
On October 26, 1967, McCain was flying as part of a 20-plane attack against a thermal power plant in central Hanoi, a heavily defended target area that had almost always been off-limits to U.S. raids.
McCain's A-4 Skyhawk had its wing blown off by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile while pulling up after dropping its bombs.
McCain fractured both arms and a leg in being hit and ejecting from his plane as it went into a vertical inverted spin. He nearly drowned after he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi.
After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around, spat on him, kicked him, and stripped him of his clothes.
Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area; he was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Loa Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by American POWs.
[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3d/Vietcapturejm01.jpg
John McCain Captured. Near Hanoi, North Vietnam: This photo, showing an unidentified man being pulled out of a lake, was radioed to Tokyo, October 27, by the North Vietnamese government. In a broadcast, October 27, Radio Hanoi reported that an American pilot identified as Lieutenant Commander John Sydney McCain, U.S.N., was rescued from Truc Bac Lake near Hanoi, October 26, after parachuting from his crippled aircraft, which had been hit by North Vietnamese ground fire. The broadcast said that McCain had been pulled from the water by North Vietnamese soldiers, treated for injuries and jailed. October 26, 1967.
Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to give him medical care unless he gave them military information.
Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care and announce his capture.
McCain spent six weeks in the Hoa Loa hospital, receiving marginal care.
Now having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white, McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp on the outskirts of Hanoi nicknamed "the Plantation" in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week (one was Bud Day, a future Medal of Honor recipient); they nursed McCain and kept him alive.
In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.
In July 1968, McCain's father was named Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), stationed in Honolulu and commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater.
McCain was immediately offered a chance to return home early: the North Vietnamese wanted a worldwide propaganda coup by appearing merciful, and also wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially.
McCain turned down the offer of repatriation, due to the Code of Conduct principle of "first in, first out": he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.
In August of 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions, and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.
Teeth and bones were broken again, as was McCain's spirit; the beginning of a suicide attempt was stopped by guards.
In October 1969, treatment of McCain and the other POWs suddenly improved, after a badly beaten and weakened POW who had been released that summer disclosed to the world press the conditions to which they were being subjected.
In December 1969, McCain was transferred back to the Hoa Loa "Hanoi Hilton"; his solitary confinement ended in March 1970.
Altogether, McCain was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years.
The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, ending direct U.S. involvement in the war, but the Operation Homecoming arrangements for POWs took longer.
McCain was finally released from captivity on March 15, 1973.
