Four decades ago a young Vietnamese army sergeant, Nguyen Van Dai, launched the surface-to-air missile that downed John McCain's bomber jet from the skies above Hanoi. The SAM blew off the right wing of the A-4 Skyhawk and sent the wounded McCain parachuting into a lake, starting his five-and-a-half-year ordeal as a prisoner of war, much of it in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton".
As the Republican senator now makes a run for the White House -- with his war heroism a central theme of his campaign -- Dai and other Vietnamese veterans said they held no rancour and even backed his presidential bid, citing his post-war efforts to restore diplomatic ties.
Others, however, bemoaned his apparent lack of remorse for bombing their country. Dai recounted how on October 26, 1967 his Missile Battalion 61 spotted McCain's plane, launched from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin to hit the capital's Yen Phu power plant.
"We followed the plane on our control screen and I pushed the launch button," said the 68-year-old retired army colonel. "There was a loud blast and a huge cloud of smoke at the missile site. The aircraft was hit, quickly lost altitude and disappeared off the screen.
"We were extremely happy," said Dai. "We left the control cabin and shook hands. We congratulated and hugged each other." McCain -- who in his memoir "Faith Of My Fathers" likened the missile to a "flying telephone pole" -- broke both arms and a leg as he ejected and parachuted unconscious into Hanoi's Truc Bach or Bamboo Island Lake.
Watching from the shore was Mai Van On, who died two years ago aged 88, having been credited by Vietnam with saving McCain's life. "As Mr On described it, he jumped into the water with a friend to swim out to the parachute," said Chuck Searcy, a former US army intelligence specialist.
"Mr On later told me that it was not something he thought about. It was just a humanitarian instinct. Somebody was in serious trouble out there, and he grabbed this bamboo pole and just jumped in."
On shore a furious crowd beat McCain -- someone smashed his shoulder with a rifle butt and another bayoneted his ankle and groin. "(On) said that when the crowd attacked McCain, he pursuaded them to stop by saying that when McCain was in the air bombing Hanoi he was the enemy but that on the ground he was a helpless human being," said Searcy, 63.
On watched as officials took the American pilot away to hospital -- the last time he would see him for nearly three decades. Searcy, the Hanoi representative of the Vietnam Veteran Memorial Fund, told McCain about On at a 1995 Washington event, paving the way for a meeting between the two men when McCain visited Hanoi the following year.
"Mr Mai Van On was very excited," said Searcy. "When they met, he ran up to McCain and embraced him. He told him, 'you're so fat, your hair is so white, your wife is so beautiful,' which are all compliments for the Vietnamese. "Mr On described what happened in very animated detail. At the end, McCain was gracious enough and thanked him. McCain gave him the Senate seal, like a paperweight and Mr Mai Van On treasured it for the rest of his life."
-- Stories of torture are "slanderous" -- From 1967-1973, McCain was a prisoner of war, mainly at a former French prison renamed Hoa Lo and called the "Hanoi Hilton" by the POWs.
Most of the complex has been demolished, but part of it is now a museum, where McCain's flight suit and parachute are on display. McCain -- whose Republican Party campaign has stressed his wartime experiences, including his refusal of early release -- writes about suffering beatings, torture and solitary confinement. In a 1973 magazine article, McCain recounted reaching his "breaking point" after he was beaten over four days, during which guards broke his left arm again and cracked his ribs.
Vietnam, by contrast, has always denied abusing any of its prisoners. "There is no other nation that treated its prisoners as humanely as Vietnam," insisted former prison director, retired colonel Tran Trong Duyet. The idea of torturing prisoners "did not exist in our minds," he said, speaking with government permission.
Duyet, 74, said he knew McCain, the son and grandson of US Navy admirals. He described him as "frank and humorous" with "a strong personality" and said they became friends. "We talked about women, love. These were stories between two men, not between a director and a prisoner. He sometimes came to my office, he taught me English pronunciation, the American accent.
"Regarding political views, we considered him extreme, conservative," said Duyet. "When arguing with me about the US war in Vietnam, he never admitted that the US had made a mistake." McCain's reports of torture were "slander," he said, but stressed that nevertheless he supported McCain's White House bid. "I hope that, if he becomes US president, in this new position of great power, he will further promote relations between the United States and Vietnam," he said. "That's the reason I would vote for him."
Not everyone's sentiments here are so rosy from the war that killed more than 58,000 Americans and up to three million Vietnamese. Former prison guard Nguyen Tien Tran, 75, called McCain "ungrateful". "We rescued him many times, from drowning and from dying of heavy injuries, but I have never heard any thanks from him," he said.
"If he becomes president of the United States, I would advise him not to be trapped in the mistaken old ways of US presidents, of bringing troops abroad and of making more war." Dai, the man who fired the SAM missile, said he backed McCain for the presidency.
"In the wartime, McCain brought airplanes and bombs to destroy Hanoi, he was our enemy," Dai said. "But now we live in peacetime, we have closed the past and we see him as a friend."
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