We have updated our Ask FactCheck item on John McCain’s flying career to note new information uncovered by the Los Angeles Times. The newspaper found records of a Navy investigation into the crash of John McCain’s aircraft while he was in flight training in 1960. McCain and others have written that the plane went down in Corpus Christi Bay when the engine quit, but Navy investigators concluded that the engine was still running when the plane hit the water, and said that the accident resulted from pilot error.
The LA Times story, which quotes a number of former Navy associates of McCain, also sheds additional light on a 1961 incident in which McCain’s aircraft cut power lines in Spain because he was flying too low, and the loss of a second aircraft in 1965.
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