from wikipedia
Note that he graduate flight school in 1960 and in 1966 requested combat service
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCain#Military_serviceJohn McCain's pre-combat duty began when he was commissioned an ensign, and started two and a half years of training as a naval aviator at Pensacola,<18> where he also earned a reputation as a party man.<6> Graduating from flight school in 1960,<19> he became a naval pilot of attack aircraft. McCain was then stationed in A-1 Skyraider squadrons<20> on the aircraft carriers USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise,<21> in the Caribbean Sea and in the Mediterranean Sea.<22> He survived two airplane crashes and a collision with power lines.<22>
On July 3, 1965 McCain married Carol Shepp, a model originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.<13> McCain adopted her two young children Doug and Andy;<23><21> he and Carol then had a daughter named Sidney.<24><25>
McCain requested a combat assignment,<26> and in December 1966 was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, flying A-4 Skyhawks.<27><28> McCain's combat duty began when he was thirty years old. In Spring 1967, Forrestal was assigned to a bombing campaign during the Vietnam War.<13><29> McCain and his fellow pilots were frustrated by micromanagement from Washington;<30> he would later write that "In all candor, we thought our civilian commanders were complete idiots who didn’t have the least notion of what it took to win the war."<29>
McCain being pulled out of Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi and about to become a prisoner of war<31> on October 26, 1967.
By then a Lieutenant Commander, McCain was almost killed in action on July 29, 1967, while serving on Forrestal, operating in the Gulf of Tonkin. He was at the epicenter of the Forrestal fire. McCain escaped from his burning jet and was trying to help another pilot escape when a bomb exploded; McCain was struck in the legs and chest by shrapnel.<32> The ensuing fire killed 134 sailors and took 24 hours to control.<33><34> As Forrestal headed for repairs, McCain volunteered for the USS Oriskany.
John McCain's capture and imprisonment began on October 26, 1967. He was flying his twenty-third bombing mission over North Vietnam, when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi.<35><36><37><38> McCain fractured both arms and a leg,<39> and then nearly drowned when he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi.<35> After he regained consciousness, a mob attacked him,<40> crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and bayoneted him; he was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Loa Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".<40><41>
Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused medical care, instead beating and interrogating him to get information.<40> Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care<40> and announced his capture. His status as a POW made the front pages of The New York Times<42> and The Washington Post.<43>
McCain spent six weeks in the Hoa Loa hospital, receiving marginal care.<35> Now having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white,<35> McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi<44> in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week.<45> In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.<40>
In July 1968, McCain's father was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater.<2> McCain was immediately offered early release.<35> The North Vietnamese wanted a worldwide propaganda coup by appearing merciful, and also wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially.<40> McCain turned down the offer of repatriation; he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.<46>
President Richard Nixon greets the released John McCain.
In August of 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery,<40><35> and McCain made an anti-American propaganda "confession."<35> He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable,<47> but as he would later write, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."<40> His injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.<48> He subsequently received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements.<49> Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions",<40> with many enduring even worse treatment than McCain.<50>
McCain refused to meet with various anti-war groups seeking peace in Hanoi, not wanting to give either them or the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory.<40> From late 1969 on, treatment of McCain and some of the other POWs became more tolerable after disclosures to the world press of their condition.<40> McCain and other prisoners cheered the B-52-led U.S. "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972 as a forceful measure to force North Vietnam to terms.<40><51>
Altogether, McCain was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. He was finally released from captivity on March 15, 1973.<52>