HARLESTON HARBOR, S.C. - Jim Flatley's most harrowing Vietnam memory is looking down from the cockpit of his F-4 Phantom jet and counting 23 surface-to-air missiles trained on him. Miraculously, bravely, the naval aviator maneuvered the enemy's barrage and returned safely to his carrier base.
''When you go through that kind of thing, you grow up a little bit and get a little common sense, if you didn't have it before,'' says Flatley, who flew 344 combat missions over Vietnam and retired from the Navy as a rear admiral in 1987. ''John McCain's got all of that inside him.''
Flatley was McCain's classmate at the Naval Academy, served with him on carriers in the Mediterranean, and shared with him the blessing and burden of being the son of a World War II hero. Today, from his office here aboard the USS Yorktown, which is now a naval aviation museum, Flatley is working hard to elect McCain as commander in chief.
With its Republican primary on Saturday, South Carolina is the next big battleground in the GOP presidential contest. Both McCain, the Arizona senator, and Texas Governor George W. Bush are making strong appeals to the state's 375,000 veterans and dueling over endorsements from local war heroes. Yesterday, on ''Meet the Press,'' Bush predicted, ''I may carry the veterans' vote in South Carolina.''
''Jim Flatley is a dear friend of mine and the first naval aviator to land a C-130 on an aircraft carrier,'' McCain told a North Charleston audience of veterans who seemed to appreciate the feat. ''That clearly indicates he has more guts than brains.''
Not everyone is impressed by whether a candidate, including McCain, served in the military. They say that in a peaceful world, it is not an important qualification for a president.
Many older veterans, however, say that America needs to ensure that someone with military experience is on deck if the nation ever needs to win another big war. For those who served in Vietnam, there seems to be something even stronger: an emotional bond with McCain, who, in the cruel test of more than five years in a Hanoi prisoner-of-war camp, says he learned the lessons of duty, honor, and country.
''I can give you all the words in the world, but only someone who was there would truly understand the sacrifice and have an inkling of what McCain went through,'' Tom O'Halloran said as he and his wife, Donna, visited the Yorktown. A Christmas tree farmer in Viewtown, Va., O'Halloran was in the Air Force in Vietnam and said he is supporting McCain because he is a military man with proven character.
Leroy Ganaway, a disabled Vietnam veteran and a Democrat, said he feels ''spiritually bound'' to McCain and believes it is ''very important'' to elect the first Vietnam veteran to the White House as a way to heal some old wounds.
''We Vietnam veterans have contained our bitterness as society hands out millions upon millions of dollars to men who can throw a ball into a basket or sink a ball in a hole,'' said Ganaway, who lives in North Charleston and attended a McCain town meeting. ''Then we watch as military men, who put their life on the line, come back to issues of food and housing and medical care.''
McCain, who sometimes salutes fellow veterans and often asks them to stand and be recognized at his rallies, said emphatically that he will correct what ails the US military: bloated procurement budgets, low pay, soldiers on food stamps, inadequate health benefits for veterans, and too-frequent deployments that sour families on military careers and dampen recruitment.
He does not mention Bush, who joined the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam, but he does belittle President Clinton, with no military record, as ''a commander in chief our men and women in uniform don't have confidence in.''
Many younger people challenge the view that military service is mandatory or even an important qualification for a president. As his 6-year-old son played with the Yorktown's wheel, Bruce Burtless, 42, said the next president does not need such on-the-job training. Burtless, who is not a veteran, said he intends to vote for Bush because he has ''the best chance'' of winning the White House.
''The Cold War is essentially over, and we are less reliant on the military than we used to be,'' said Burtless, who repairs wells and pumps in Adrian, Mich.
That is what concerns James Knight, who pilots DC-10s for Federal Express in Nashville, about McCain. Through his work he knows many pilots, quite a few of them Vietnam combat veterans, and the ones who flew single-seat aircraft frequently do not adapt well to a crew or team environment.
''Fighter pilots are a breed of people all of their own,'' said Knight, who was in the Air Force from 1967 to 1973 and inspected the Vietnam-era aircraft on the Yorktown's flight deck. ''The skills it takes to fly an airplane don't always translate into the world of diplomacy, and personal heroism can be, in later life, as much a hindrance as a benefit.''
Knight quipped that he thinks both McCain and Bush are ''arrested adolescent fighter pilots.'' Still, he and his wife, Judy, like Bush better.
''I have no doubt about McCain's physical courage, and we do need leaders who will look you in the eye and tell the truth,'' Knight said. ''But there are plenty of combat pilots I wouldn't buy a used car from.''
