John McCain has occasionally spoken about how lucky he feels to still be alive having "survived three plane crashes." The LA Times digs deeper into those crashes and delivers what could be the most brutal takedown of one of the pillars of McCain's candidacy for president, his military experience.

Of McCain's days as a Naval aviator, The Times writes:

Mishaps mark John McCain's record as naval aviator: Three crashes early in his career led Navy officials to question or fault his judgment.

John McCain, welcome to your October surprise.

The LAT documents his crashes.

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.

D'oh!

More:

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.

And then there were two incidents after he was deployed to Vietnam.

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.

Not faulted...except that The LA Times actually does imply that McCain might have avoided being shot down had he not been such a reckless pilot.

Three months later, McCain was on his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when a surface-to-air missile struck his A-4 attack jet. He was flying 3,000 feet above Hanoi.

A then-secret report issued in 1967 by McCain's squadron said the aviators had learned to stay at an altitude of 4,000 to 10,000 feet in heavy surface-to-air missile environments and look for approaching missiles.

This portrayal of McCain plays into a narrative that the Obama campaign has become rather fond of lately, which is that McCain's behavior is "erratic." A couple examples from the LAT article about the erratic behavior of young John McCain.  

This examination of his record revealed a pilot who early in his career was cocky, occasionally cavalier and prone to testing limits. [...]

The young McCain has often been described as undisciplined and fearless -- a characterization McCain himself fostered in his autobiography.

The media has been clutching its pearls over the Obama campaign's use of the word "erratic" when describing McCain presumably because of an ageism subtext, but these tales make clear that in the case of John MCCain, erratic behavior is not a function of his advanced years, rather it's simply a quality of his character. From the young McCain's cockpit antics to the last 2 weeks of wacky behavior on the campaign trail, as Claire McCaskill eloquently documented on Fox News Sunday yesterday.

Now, on the other hand, if you look at what Barack Obama's ad says, it's just talking about what John McCain did the last two weeks. He was erratic. One day, no bailout. The next day, a bailout. One day, "I'm suspending my campaign." The next day, "I'm not."

One day, "I'm going to debate." The next day, "I'm not going to debate." The next day, I go ahead and debate. One day, "I'm not going to leave Washington until we have a deal," and then he's on a plane out of Washington after the deal's kind of blown up. So it really -- there has been a lot of erratic behavior.