The American fighter pilot and politician Randy Cunningham died at the age of 83. As a war hero from the Vietnam War, he inspired the makers of the film Top Gun but he later became discredited as a politician by a huge bribery scandal.

The ‘Duke’ Cunningham born in California became a flying ace in 1967 with the American Navy. He wrote history five years later by becoming the first ace of the Vietnam War: a pilot who shot at least five enemy aircraft from the sky.

Cunningham already had two air victories to his name when he shot no fewer than three opponents out of the air on 10 May 1972 in the heaviest air fights of the war.

“As a pilot you want nothing more than to shoot the other from the sky,” Cunningham looked back on his victories. “If it happens then, every muscle, all attention, every thoght is focused on that.”