John McCain - the celebrated war hero who became a six-term Republican Senator and Presidential nominee has died at the age of 81.
The Arizona representative, one of the most influential US politicians of his generation, died following a battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer.
McCain became known as a political maverick willing to stick to his conservative ideals rather than follow party leaders, gaining a reputation for reaching across the political aisle and trying to work with Democrats.
Barack Obama, who triumphed over McCain in the Presidential 2008 election was among those to lead the tributes. He said McCain and he shared a “fidelity to something higher - the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed.”
Before beginning a 35-year career in Congress, he served as a pilot in the US Navy, enduring a six-year spell in a Prisoner Of War camp after he was shot down during the Vietnam War.
In the final months of his life, the ailing Senator proved a thorn in the side of Donald Trump, with whom he had clashed in the past, ending the President’s attempt to scrap Obamacare. In one of his final significant acts as a Senator, McCain voted in 2017 against a new Healthcare Bill dooming it with a dramatic thumbs-down on the Senate floor.
Following his father and grandfather, who both became four-star Admirals, into the forces, he enrolled in the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
He served as a pilot based on various aircraft carriers during in the Vietnam War, before he was captured after being shot down on a bombing mission over Hanoi in October 1967.
Over the following six years,McCain was held as a Prisoner-Of-War, often being tortured and sustaining injuries that left him with life-long physical disabilities.
He was released in 1973 after refusing an early repatriation offer from his captors when they discovered his father was a high-ranking Naval officer. McCain entered politics in the early 1980s after leaving the Navy and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1983. - BBC
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