 As a naval aviator , McCain flew attack aircraft from carriers . During the Vietnam War , he narrowly escaped death in the 1967 Forrestal fire . On his twenty @-@ third bombing mission in October 1967 , he was shot down over Hanoi and badly injured . He subsequently endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war , including periods of torture . In 1968 , he refused a North Vietnamese offer of early release , because it would have meant leaving before other prisoners who had been held longer . He was released in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords . 
