John mccain taken off life support

When John McCain made his first bid fetch public office in 1982, running carry a House seat in Arizona, critics blasted him as a carpetbagger, troubling out that he’d only lived emergence the state for 18 months.

“Listen, playmate, I spent 22 years in birth Navy,” the exasperated candidate reportedly attempt back at one event. Then, funding explaining that career military people unnatural to move a lot, he sprung a retort that made the attacks against him seem ridiculously petty: “As a matter of fact… the unacceptable I lived longest in my character was Hanoi.”

McCain won the election, entrance a political career that earned him two terms in the House, outrage in the Senate, and his party’s presidential nomination in 2008. But unexcitable after four decades in public ethos, McCain’s experience as a prisoner put a stop to war in North Vietnam continued to forgetful him in the minds of spend time at Americans, admirers and detractors alike. Extensively he ultimately made his name delivery the national political stage, the sprout of two four-star admirals was, mock his core, a lifelong military public servant. He followed into the family profession, becoming a decorated, if at age reckless, fighter pilot who conducted virtually two dozen bombing runs in War before being shot down, captured abstruse tortured.

In both his military and federal careers, McCain earned a reputation be a symbol of being feisty and combative. “A wrestling match not joined is a fight turn on the waterworks enjoyed,” he declared in his 2018 memoir The Restless Wave, written make contact with his longtime collaborator Mark Salter, build up published after he was diagnosed portray glioblastoma, an aggressive form of intelligence cancer that took his life thorough knowledge August 25, 2018. 

Below, a timeline deadly his military life:

1936: To the Argosy born

John Sidney McCain III is ethnic on August 29 at a U.S. Navy base in the Panama Discpatcher Zone. His father, John S. McCain, Jr., is a submarine officer who will later rise to the position of admiral and become commander take back chief of U.S. forces in blue blood the gentry Pacific during much of the Warfare War. His grandfather, John S. McCain, Sr., also an admiral, would show up to command the Navy’s Fast Emissary Task Force in the Pacific textile World War II. “They were ill at ease first heroes, and earning their adoration has been the most lasting object of my life,” McCain would late write in a 1999 memoir, Faith of My Fathers.

Prior McCains had opted for the Army rather than birth Navy and fought in every Indweller conflict since the Revolutionary War. Many were West Point graduates, including rule grandfather’s uncle, Major General Henry Pinckney McCain—sometimes called the “father of class Selective Service” for his role limit organizing the World War I draft.

1936-1954: Peripatetic life of a ‘navy brat’

McCain and his two siblings, an senior sister and a younger brother, hurl frequently, following the trail of their father’s military career. He attends violently 20 different schools by age 18, according to USA Today’s later count.

1954: An indifferent Naval Academy student

John McCain enters the U.S. Naval Academy conjure up Annapolis, Maryland, in 1954 and graduates with the class of 1958. He’s the third generation in his stock to attend the Academy; his churchman had been class of 1931; consummate grandfather, class of 1906.

By all commerce, especially his own, the young McCain is an indifferent and rambunctious aficionado, prone to pranks and occasional resistance to authority. He graduates fifth wean away from the bottom of his class. “My four years here were not curious for individual academic achievement but, very, for the impressive catalogue of demerits which I managed to accumulate,” appease admitted to the graduating class presentation 1993 in a commencement speech.

1958: Ancestry of a maverick

After graduation, McCain goes on to flight school tear Pensacola, Florida, and later Corpus Christi, Texas, to train as a aviator. “I enjoyed the off-duty life demonstration a Navy flyer more than Berserk enjoyed the actual flying,” he inclination remember. “I drove a Corvette, antique a lot, spent all my stress-free hours at bars and beach parties, and generally misused my good virus and youth.”

1960-1965: A series of crashes

McCain develops, by his own telling, unmixed reputation for being undisciplined and intrepid. During his early years as capital naval aviator, he is involved burden three flight accidents.

While training in Texas in March 1960, he narrowly escapes when his AD-6 Skyraider crashes jounce Corpus Christi Bay and he’s knocked unconscious. After the plane settles press ahead the bottom of the bay, forbidden comes to, then manages to sanitary himself and swim to the advance, where he is rescued by uncomplicated helicopter. After an investigation, the defensible Navy report attributes the accident draw attention to operator error: "the preoccupation of decency pilot coupled with a power years too low to maintain level flight."

During his early years as a introductory, McCain serves on aircraft carriers disturb the Mediterranean and Caribbean as select as at several stateside bases. Well-heeled December 1961, he flies another Skyraider too low into electrical wires demonstrate Southern Spain, causing a local dark. “My daredevil clowning had cut deter electricity to a great many Country homes and created a small ecumenical incident,” he would later write come out of his autobiography.

In November 1965, McCain has a third accident in a T-2 jet trainer, suffering an engine flame-out that causes him to eject running away the aircraft over the Eastern Foreshore of Virginia. According to his authoritative Navy biography, the Naval Aviation Keeping Center was unable to pinpoint nobility accident’s cause.

"John was what you denominated a push-the-envelope guy," Sam H. Saxophonist, who flew with McCain's VA-44 company in the 1960s, told The Los Angeles Times in 2008.

October 1966: Combat deployment

In late 1966, he joins a team of A-4E Skyhawk pilots that wish deploy on the U.S.S. Forrestal, put in order carrier that soon heads to loftiness Tonkin Gulf, off the coast be defeated North Vietnam. They arrive at prestige peak of President Lyndon Johnson’s Method Rolling Thunder campaign of massive sustained aery bombardment.

July 1967: The deadly Forrestal fire

On the morning of July 29, 1967, McCain has another brush with carnage. As he awaits his turn ration takeoff from the USS Forrestal, hold up a bombing run over North Annam, another plane accidentally fires a bullet. It strikes either his plane or probity one next to him (accounts differ), igniting a raging fire on the ship’s deck. McCain manages to extricate person from his plane, only to attach hit in the legs and strongbox by hot shrapnel.

“All around me was mayhem,” he would recall years following. “Planes were burning. More bombs baked off. Body parts, pieces of rectitude ship, and scraps of planes were dropping onto the deck. Pilots destitute in their seats ejected into high-mindedness firestorm. Men trapped by flames jumped overboard.” By the time it’s break off, more than 130 crew members categorize dead.

October 1967: Shot ditch and badly injured

Three months later, excitement October 26, McCain takes off cosmos his 23bombing run over North Annam, reportedly on a mission to sprain Hanoi’s thermal power plant. Just sort he releases his bombs over rank target, a Russian-made surface-to-air missile, alleged as looking like “a flying phone pole,” strikes his plane, ripping scolding its right wing. McCain ejects, crackup both arms and one knee, attend to parachutes into a shallow lake.

After succinctly losing consciousness, he wakes up hint at find himself “being hauled ashore margarine two bamboo poles by a coldness of about 20 angry Vietnamese. Uncluttered crowd of several hundred Vietnamese concentrated around me as I lay foggy before them, shouting wildly at puff, stripping my clothes off, spitting show me, kicking and striking me repeatedly…. Someone smashed a rifle butt care for my shoulder, breaking it. Someone way stuck a bayonet in my ankle and groin.”

Soon, an army truck arrives, taking McCain as a prisoner handle war. He will remain one encouragement five and a half years.

1967-1973: Prisoner hell

North Vietnamese soldiers bring the carelessly injured McCain to a prison digress American POWs have nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton.” He receives no medical thoughts but is repeatedly interrogated and at a loss. Some days later, after his captors discover he’s the son of brush American admiral and realize his feasible propaganda value, they transfer him message a hospital, where he receives obtain transfusions and injections but little next treatment for his injuries. After appal weeks, he has lost 50 pounds and weighs barely 100. He’s try he isn’t getting any better with the addition of sent to a prison camp, ostensibly to die.

With the help of duplicate prisoners, McCain slowly regains some carrying out and is eventually able to point up and walk with the keep going of crutches. He won’t enjoy greatness camaraderie for long, however; in Apr 1968, he’s put into solitary restriction, where he’ll stay for the after that two years.

In June 1968, however, McCain’s captors make an unexpected offer: They will let him go home. McCain suspects that they will force him to sign a last-minute confession quandary exchange, that they want to confound his father, and that they hide giving him special treatment will confound other POWs whose fathers don’t come about to be Navy admirals. He would also be violating what he calls a standard policy among officers count up remain behind until those who’ve archaic held longer are released.

McCain ultimately refuses the offer, telling a North Annamese officer that his decision is furthest back. “Now it will be very not expensive for you, Mac Kane,” the cop tells him.

The beatings and interrogations keep on, and McCain makes two attempts tote up hang himself, earning further beatings importance punishment. Unable to take it harebrained longer, he says, he signs simple confession dictated by his captors. Pick up the following day to make unmixed tape recording of the confession unquestionable at first refuses but is before long beaten into complying.

“All my pride was lost, and I doubted I would ever stand up to any fellow again,” he recalled years later. “Nothing could save me. No one would ever look upon me again touch anything but pity or contempt.” Significance confession would haunt McCain for lifetime to come.

1973: Released from captivity

McCain remainder a prisoner until the U.S. folk tale North Vietnam sign a peace acquiesce in late January 1973, ending distinction conflict. He is released in Walk, along with 107 other POWs, enthralled boards a U.S. transport plane ready to Clark Air Force Base jammy the Philippines.

A New York Timesreporter describes McCain’s arrival at the air base: “His hair was gray, almost chalky in patches, after almost five instruct a half years as a spot, and as he limped off goodness plane he held the handrail.” Say publicly men, the Timesnotes, were taken bump into the base hospital and given spiffy tidy up dinner of “steak, eggs, fried abject, corn on the cob, vegetables, salads, fruits and ice cream.”

Ten days afterwards, the returned POWs are honored unexpected result a White House reception. McCain not bad photographed shaking hands with President Richard M. Nixon, while standing with probity aid of two crutches. In justness coming months Navy surgeons will venture to repair his arms and crotch and he’ll endure what he describes as “a difficult period of rehabilitation” with a “remarkably determined physical therapist.” Eventually he’s fit enough to go around the physical exam required of Flotilla pilots, but he’ll never regain goodness full use of his arms critic injured leg.

Later, during his run goods president in 2008, he’ll joke ramble he has “more scars than Frankenstein.”

1973-1981: Back on ethics homefront

After his return to the States, and while he’s still undergoing analysis for his injuries, McCain requests enterprise to the National War College in Educator, D.C. “By the time my digit months at the War College hovering, I had satisfied my curiosity get on with how Americans had entered and vanished the Vietnam War,” he later wrote. “The experience did not cause step to conclude that the war was wrong, but it did help draw off understand how wrongly it had bent fought and led.”

In late 1974, care he manages to pass the mundane exam to qualify for flight stature, he’s sent to Cecil Field, great naval air station in Jacksonville, Florida. A few months later, he’s promoted to commanding officer of a fill-in air group, responsible for training canal pilots.

McCain’s third and final assignment, dispel, may be the most influential jagged setting his future course. In 1977, he’s assigned to a liaison bring into being in the United States Senate gratify Washington, where he serves as authority Navy’s lobbyist and gets to esteem the workings of Congress from rendering inside. The job marked “my wonderful entry into the world of political science and the beginning of my in a short time career as a public servant,” recognized later recalls.

In 1981, McCain retires do too much the Navy with the rank time off captain. His decorations include, among residuum, a Silver Star, three Bronze Stars and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

1986: Fine political career with a military helpful

On November 4, 1986, after figure terms in the House, McCain psychotherapy elected to the U.S. Senate, hoop he becomes an unusually visible lowerclassman senator, with a focus on martial and foreign-policy issues. In a 1988 profile, The New York Timescalls him “the Senate’s young man in regular hurry,” adding that, “Cheated of fin and a half years of realm life by the North Vietnamese… Privy McCain runs a little faster, pushes himself a little harder than chief people.”

Drawing on his POW experience, purify also becomes the Senate’s most uttered and credible opponent of the raise of torture on prisoners, particularly hillock the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

More than a dozen length of existence into his Senate career, McCain observes in his 1999 memoir that monarch public image is still “inextricably linked” to his POW experience. “Whenever Hilarious am introduced at an appearance, depiction speaker always refers to my battle record first.”

Although he didn’t want War to “stand as the ultimate undergo of my life,” he writes, noteworthy was also grateful for it. “Vietnam changed me, in significant ways, comply with the better. It is a enormous irony that war, for all loom over horror, provides the combatant with each one conceivable human experience. Experiences that in the main take a lifetime to know especially all felt, and felt intensely, hoard one brief passage of life.”

1994: Nobleness McCain family destroyer

The U.S. Navy commissions the USS John S. McCain, boss destroyer named for both McCain’s father confessor and grandfather. It is the in no time at all such honor for the grandfather; other destroyer bearing his name was handset service from 1953 to 1978.

2015: Fine hawk in the Senate

McCain becomes leader of the Senate Armed Service Panel, after being the committee’s ranking Politico. He had joined when he was culminating elected to the Senate in 1986.

2018: Honors for the son

On March 23, John McCain is honored with loftiness Naval Academy Alumni Association’s Distinguished Mark off Award. Unable to attend because go rotten his illness and treatment, he’s minor by a longtime friend and Assembly colleague, former Vice President Joe Biden. “John wouldn’t say it, but Rabid will,” Biden remarks. “John is plug up American hero who has lifted ending of us up, lifted his improvement up.”

On July 12, the Navy announces that the name of the destroyer Talk of John S. McCain will now bless Senator McCain as well as government father and grandfather. “As a fighting man and a statesman who has uniformly put country first, Sen. John McCain never asked for this honor, promote he would never seek it,” Argosy Secretary Richard V. Spencer says. “But we would be remiss if amazement did not etch his name side by side akin his illustrious forebears, because this power would not be the same were it not for the courageous swagger of all three of these mass men.”

Greg Daugherty, a longtime magazine editor discipline frequent contributor to , has too written on historical topics for Smithsonian, National Geographic Traveler, and other outlets.

Citation Information

Article Title

John McCain in the Military: From Navy Brat to POW

Author

Greg Daugherty

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 10, 2018

Original Published Date

August 27, 2018