[jp10]

I would think he would be hesitant to talk about losing aircraft.
He lost two Navy aircraft while piloting them. One crash was found to be be McCain's fault, the other due to an engine failure of undetermined cause. He also returned from a training mission to the USS Intrepid with a busted oil line and trailing several feet of electrical cables. Seems he knocked down some power lines while flying too low over southern Spain. As he later wrote. "My daredevil clowning had cut off electricity to a great many Spanish homes and created a small international incident."