McCain time travel

Matt Welch dismisses McCain newspaper endorsements for "errors of fact" in the same paragraph where Welch writes about McCain:

In the 1970s, he took R&R — the rest and recuperation allowed by the military for wartime soldiers — with legendary New York Times scribe R.W. "Johnny" Apple Jr. before he got shot down over Vietnam.

Question for L.A. Times fact checkers: In what decade was McCain shot down over Vietnam?

UPDATE: Guess I could do better checking my own facts. Welch's piece is in L.A. Weekly, not L.A. Times.