If McCain loses the "war hero" mantle, what does he have left?

Much of John McCain's claim to the presidency has been his experience as a prisoner of war. Wesley Clark attempted, clumsily, to point out that being shot down and taken prisoner is not a qualification for the presidency. He was right, of course, but it was the wrong time for that message, with the media still in passionate manlove with McCain. There is a certain personal heroism in surviving hellish conditions, but by that definition, many of those held at Guantanamo Bay could be called heroes by people in their countries as well for surviving their captivity by the United States. Surviving captivity demonstrates a certain amount of intestinal fortitude, but it does not by itself constitute heroism in war. And yet, John McCain has been able to get away with claiming the presidency is his due because he was captured by the enemy in Vietnam.

Until now.

Wesley Clark won himself a banishment from the Democratic National Convention for pointing this out, but perhaps now the time is right, and the Los Angeles Times is noting aspects about McCain's war experience other than his captivity:

John McCain was training in his AD-6 Skyraider on an overcast Texas morning in 1960 when he slammed into Corpus Christi Bay and sheared the skin off his plane's wings.

McCain recounted the accident decades later in his autobiography. "The engine quit while I was practicing landings," he wrote. But an investigation board at the Naval Aviation Safety Center found no evidence of engine failure.

The 23-year-old junior lieutenant wasn't paying attention and erred in using "a power setting too low to maintain level flight in a turn," investigators concluded.

The crash was one of three early in McCain's aviation career in which his flying skills and judgment were faulted or questioned by Navy officials.

In his most serious lapse, McCain was "clowning" around in a Skyraider over southern Spain about December 1961 and flew into electrical wires, causing a blackout, according to McCain's own account as well as those of naval officers and enlistees aboard the carrier Intrepid. In another incident, in 1965, McCain crashed a T-2 trainer jet in Virginia.

After McCain was sent to Vietnam, his plane was destroyed in an explosion on the deck of an aircraft carrier in 1967. Three months later, he was shot down during a bombing mission over Hanoi and taken prisoner. He was not faulted in either of those cases and was later lauded for his heroism as a prisoner of war.

As a presidential candidate, McCain has cited his military service -- particularly his 5 1/2 years as a POW. But he has been less forthcoming about his mistakes in the cockpit.

The Times interviewed men who served with McCain and located once-confidential 1960s-era accident reports and formerly classified evaluations of his squadrons during the Vietnam War. This examination of his record revealed a pilot who early in his career was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits.

In today's military, a lapse in judgment that causes a crash can end a pilot's career. Though standards were looser and crashes more frequent in the 1960s, McCain's record stands out.

"Three mishaps are unusual," said Michael L. Barr, a former Air Force pilot with 137 combat missions in Vietnam and an internationally known aviation safety expert who teaches in USC's Aviation Safety and Security Program. "After the third accident, you would say: Is there a trend here in terms of his flying skills and his judgment?"

Jeremiah Pearson, a Navy officer who flew 400 missions over Vietnam without a mishap and later became the head of human spaceflight at NASA, said: "That's a lot. You don't want any. Maybe he was just unlucky."

Naval aviation experts say the three accidents before McCain's deployment to Vietnam probably triggered a review to determine whether he should be allowed to continue flying. The results of the review would have been confidential.

The Times asked McCain's campaign to release any military personnel records in the candidate's possession showing how the Navy handled the three incidents. The campaign said it would have no comment.

If John McCain was shot down because he took undue risks and was cocky and reckless, that kind of changes the war hero meme and turns him into the kind of impulsive hothead who shows bad judgment that we see today.