The long-time senator and former Navy secretary died yesterday at home in Virgina, US media reported, citing his former chief of staff Susan Magill.

Born in 1927, he enlisted in the military at 17, several months before the end of World War II, and five years later found himself serving in the Marines in the Korean War.

He then went to law school and became a US attorney and subsequently moved to private practice.

In 1972, at the end of the Vietnam War, he was named Navy secretary in president Richard Nixon’s administration.

Warner married Taylor in 1976, the sixth of her seven husbands.

They divorced in 1982.

In 1978 he won election to the Senate from Virginia, and played important roles in the key intelligence and armed services committees.

He backed President George W Bush’s declaration of war in Iraq, but headed a breakaway group of Republicans supporting a Senate resolution condemning Bush’s strategy to increase US troops in Iraq.

It called for the president to consider other options and alternatives for achieving US strategic goals.