The ecstatic US Navy sailor whose kiss with a woman in Times Square celebrating the end of World War II was immortalized in one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century has died aged 95.

George Mendonsa fell and suffered a seizure on Sunday at the assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he lived with his wife of 70 years, his daughter, Sharon Molleur, told The Providence Journal. He died two days before his 96th birthday.

Mendonsa was shown kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse’s uniform, on August 14, 1945. Known as V-J Day, it was the day Japan surrendered to the United States.

It wasn’t until decades later that Mendonsa and Friedman were identified as the couple locking lips what became one of the most widely-recognized images of the World War II era, taken by Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Friedman died in 2016 at the age of 92.

Mendonsa is survived by his wife Rita, son Ron Mendonsa and daughter Sharon Mouller, who said arrangements for her father’s funeral have not been made.

The sailor spent 74 years insisting that he was the man in the photograph, along with dozens of others who were sure it was them.

It wasn’t until recently that his claim was verified when facial recognition technology and experts in photography and forensic anthropology ruled out all the other sailors.

‘The evidence is so overwhelming,’ Lawrence Verria, coauthor of The Kissing Sailor, told the Providence Journal in the hours after Mendonsa’s passing.

‘There really is no doubt…. This man deserves the credit during his life

Verria met with Mendonsa when he and George Galdorisi were researching The Kissing Sailor, published in 2012 by the Naval Institute Press.

The author, who is now head of the social studies department at North Kingstown High School, called Mendonsa a national treasure.

‘George Mendonsa just won me over,’ Verria said. ‘He really was bigger than life.’

Verria said Mendonsa was a fisherman whose skills at maneuvering a boat made him a perfect fit for the Navy. During the war, Mendonsa successfully maneuvered his destroyer through Typhoon Cobra, which then flipped three other destroyers.

The sailor served at the helm of The Sullivans, a boat named for five brothers who died when the USS Juneau sank during World War II.

It was his time on that ship that inspired Mendonsa to kiss the woman in the nurses uniform on V-J Day, Verria said.

After the USS Bunker Hill was struck in a kamikaze attack in May of 1945, The Sullivans, steered by Mendonsa, was sent to rescue the survivors and transfer the wounded to the Bountiful, a nursing ship.

Mendonsa told Verria of how he watched from the helm as the nurses tended to the wounded sailors, repeating telling the author: ‘They were in a bad way.’

Three months later, Mendonsa was on leave and happened to be in Times Square when the end of the war was announced.

‘He sees the nurse, he can’t help himself,’ Verria told The Providence Journal. He said Mendonsa grabbed Friedman and kissed her because she represented the nurses he’s seen helping the wounded sailors on the USS Bunker Hill.

‘It’s what everybody was doing on August 14, 1945,’ Verria said. ‘Everybody was kissing and hugging. As soon as the kiss was over, they went their separate ways.’

Mendonsa and Friedman reunited for a CBS News segment in 2012 ahead of the 67th anniversary of V-J Day.   

During that interview, Mendonsa revealed that he had been on a date with another woman named Rita Petry at Radio City Music Hall when news of the Japanese surrender was announced.

‘They stopped the show and they said: “The war is over. The Japanese have surrendered,”‘ he recalled.

Mendonsa and his date, who would later become his wife, rushed to a nearby bar where the sailor admits he ‘popped quite a few drinks’.

As they set on their way, Mendonsa spotted a woman in a nurse’s uniform – he left Petry and rushed to grab her.

‘The excitement of the war being over, plus I had a few drinks,’ he told CBS. ‘So when I saw the nurse, I grabbed her, and I kissed her.’

Friedman interjected: ‘I did not see him approaching, and before I know it, I was in this vice grip.’   

She said recognized herself in the photograph as soon as it was published in Life magazine, adding: ‘You don’t forget this guy grabbing you.’ 

Mendonsa didn’t know about the photograph until more than three decades later, when Life magazine asked the couple to identify themselves in 1980 and one of his friends noticed it.

Mendonsa recalled telling that friend: ‘You’re crazy’ when he told him about the photo.

‘This was 1980, 35 years after the war ended,’ Mendonsa said. ‘So he brought the magazine over to the house and, the minute I looked at it, I said: “Damn. That IS me!”‘

He said the expression on his date’s face, who can be seen with her mouth agape over his left shoulder, is proof that he is the sailor in the much-contested photograph.

‘A lot of people want to know what I was thinking,’ Petry told the New York Post in 2012. ‘It was a happy day; I was grinning like an idiot. The kiss really didn’t bother me at all. If I had been engaged, maybe.’

Now married for 66 years, Petry insists that she has never been mad that her future husband locked lips with another woman on their first date. 

However, she admitted: ‘In all these years, George has never kissed me like that.’