VAIL, Colo. — One of the 46 delegates Colorado is sending the Republican National Convention is a former Air Force pilot who says he was imprisoned with John McCain during the Vietnam War.

Tom Kirk, 79, said he was shot down in Vietnam in 1967, the same year McCain, a Navy pilot, was. Kirk said he spent two years in solitary confinement at a prison in Hanoi and then was moved to a large room with McCain and about 40 other prisoners of war.

He said he spent several months there with McCain and was later released in 1973.

Kirk, a financial consultant who moved to the Vail area in 1992, had no political experience when he went to the state Republican convention in Broomfield in May.

The retired colonel told the crowd that he had been McCain’s cell mate, that he believed in him and wanted to work for McCain. He received more votes than any other delegate and has spent the last few months campaigning for McCain around Colorado.

“I’ve watched him under very adverse situations be as strong as steel in what he believes in, holding up well and taking torture to not reveal things he believes in,” Kirk said.

Kirk and 11 other former Vietnam prisoners of war are scheduled to meet with McCain during the convention in St. Paul, Minn.