Against all odds, McCain fights for GOP nod

In August 1958, John McCain reports to Navy flight school in Pensacola, Florida and he arrives in style, driving his brand new Corvette.

Joe McCain, brother: The day he graduated from the Naval Academy he slipped behind the wheel of a brand new Corvette. He drove this white convertible with red leather interior in a pilot’s uniform just looking, [whew] you know.

At Pensacola, McCain’s life revolves around the sports car, the beach and the women. He's living the myth of the charmed pilots' life.

Chuck Larson, flight school classmate: He liked to have fun. People liked to be around John because of his charisma and personality. Just going on liberty with John at night, you knew it was going to be fun.

He becomes a competent naval aviator, and trains at a series of flight schools.

But one Saturday morning, while practicing take-offs in his A-6 Skyraider off the Texas Gulf Coast, the engine suddenly quits. McCain’s plane plunges into Corpus Christi Bay.

Larson: The last thing I remember is looking over my shoulder as I was flying south and I didn’t see him come to the surface. I banked my aircraft and looked back over my shoulder and I still didn't see a helmet floating in the water or someone come to the surface.

Knocked unconscious on impact, McCain comes to just as the plane hits bottom and he fights his way to the surface.

Larson: Typical John that night, they sent him home from sick bay. They said go to bed and they gave him some pain killers. They said we want you to take bed rest over the weekend. We'll see how you are Monday morning. John did that for about an hour. Then around supper time John said lets go over to the club, I feel fine.

In October 1962, after returning home from routine maneuvers in the Mediterranean, McCain’s ship, the enterprise, is urgently diverted to Cuba.

The Soviets are shipping nuclear missiles to the island. To stop them, the U.S. forms a naval blockade. The Enterprise is the first ship to reach Cuban waters, just as the world prepares for the worst.

But the Soviets take back their missiles, the crisis is averted and McCain returns to Pensacola.

By 1964, he's courting a Philadelphia model named Carol Shepp.

Bob Timberg, biographer: They had a kind of whirlwind courtship. Carol was very much like John McCain in that she was very vivacious, very fun-loving.

They marry in July 1965. A little over a year later, Carol gives birth to a daughter, Sidney.

Halfway around the world, America is getting more deeply involved in Vietnam.

In the spring of 1967, McCain is ordered to the aircraft carrier Forestal, off the North Vietnam coast in the Gulf of Tonkin

On the Forestal John McCain prepares for war.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): We'd only been in combat for a few days, so the adrenaline and excitement was still quite high.

On July 29, 30-year-old McCain climbs into his A-4e Skyhawk.

After a pre-flight check, his plane gets into take-off position.

But as captured in this real-life video, another plane's rocket ignites and soars across the flight deck. It punctures McCain’s external fuel tank, which erupts into a huge fireball.

Video cameras mounted on the flight deck record the raging inferno surrounding McCain’s plane.

Timberg: McCain is essentially engulfed in it. Very quickly and very cooly he realizes that his only way out is to pop open the cockpit. He climbs out, and there's this lake of fire. He drops into it, rolls and rolls through it.

But just as he turns around to help his fellow pilots escape, the first bomb goes off.

Timberg: Planes are exploding and rockets are exploding. Men are coming out and trying to put the fire out only to have the explosions kill them.

McCain is blown backward by the explosion. Dazed, but conscious, he drags himself to sickbay.

Sen. McCain: And I went up to the sickbay and I walked in and there were a whole lot of people lying around that had been terribly burned, third-degree burns, unrecognizable. And one of them called me over and he said, “Mr. McCain, Mr. So-and-so, he didn't make it, did he?” And I said, “Well yeah, he did I just saw him around in the other room. And he said, “Oh thank God.” And he died.

The fire rages for hours. Planes are tossed overboard to prevent even further explosions. A curtain of fire-retardant foam is pumped out onto the deck in a desperate attempt to save the ship.

Down in sickbay, McCain looks on in helpless horror as a video monitor plays the scene.

Joe McCain: Here was this disaster occurring all around him, in which he could see his fellows, his comrades, his pilots, his beloved enlisted men just get cooked, and he's in the middle of this enormous chaos. This disaster was happening to everybody else.

Finally, after 24 hours, the fire is brought under control. The ship is saved, but at great human cost; 134 men lose their lives.

McCain is one of the lucky ones.

Timberg: Just to survive that, I mean that was one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the United States Navy. There were scores of men killed, millions upon millions of damage. McCain's plane was the one that, you know, that took the rocket that set in motion this entire conflagration.

The Forestal limps back to port in the Philippines, and McCain takes leave in Hawaii.

His friends and family are surprised by what they hear.

Larson: Certainly John had earned the right to have a little time off and recoup before he went back into the fray. But he immediately volunteered to go right back with another squadron. I think John had two things. First, a sense of his own mortality. But I think he also felt that I was cheated in a way from doing my duty.

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