McCain had both his arms broken while he was being tortured by the NVA. They hung him from a position where his arms had to carry all his weight, and were cocked behind him so that his muscles would fatigue quickly and not be able to support his weight. To this day he is unable to raise his arms any higher than his shoulders, if that. As for the fire, it was the Forrestal aka the ForrestFire. A zuni rocket zoomed in from his left, and hit his fully fueled left drop tank squarely. He barely bails out quickly enough to avoid being consumed in the subsequent fireball. I have seen the PLAT camera video numerous times. None of this is conjecture. It is fact, not the wikipedia crap. The problem with the ensuing fire was the crew was unfamiliar with a new fire retardant called AFFF. Aqueous Film Forming Foam. It actually smothers the underlying fuel, preventing air, and fire from coming in contact with it. Once AFFF is laid down it should be allowed to set, but unprepared as this crew was, and not knowing any better, they had 2 hose teams laying down AFFF, and two using seawater. They ended up canceling each other out, or more accurately the seawater hose teams canceled out the AFFF hose teams. The fire could have been put out in a small fraction of the actual time, and far less damage would have occurred. Not one iota of any event the day of the ForrestFire was John McCain's fault. Despite a lot of policy disagreements I have had with him over the years he is a true blue war hero, and it would take an infinite number of owebumas and Kerrys to make one John McCain.
