George Mendonsa, a World War II veteran, was living in a rest home in Middletown, Rhode Island when he passed away aged 95 at the weekend.

His daughter Sharon Molleur confirmed his death to NBC, adding he had been suffering severe congestive heart failure.

He died just days before he would have turned 96.

He was pictured passionately kissing a nurse in a white uniform at New York’s Times Square on August 14, 1945, who was dipped backwards as thousands of others watched on and celebrated the end of the war.

The picture became one of the most famous ever taken - but there was confusion and competing claims about who the sailor really was. When it was originally published in Life magazine there were no identities mentioned in the caption.

That led to speculation over many years about who the mystery sailor actually was. Mr Mendonsa never backed down from his claim however, despite several other sailors over the years insisting they were in the picture.

Mendonsa said he remembered the exact moment of the kiss, and pointed to physical evidence such as the man’s large hands and the scar on the brow that it was him.

He was finally proven correct when Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi, authors of the 2012 book “The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo that Ended World War II,” looked at facial recognition technology and also conducted interviews to eliminate the false claims.

Mendonsa said in the book he was on leave in Manhattan when the end of the war was announced, and he was so swept up in the emotion of the moment when he saw the young nurse he felt compelled to kiss her.

She was later identified as Greta Zimmer Friedman, of Virginia. She died in 2016 aged 92.

Ms Molleur said her father was proud of the status of the photo.

“He was very proud of his service and the picture and what it stood for,” Molleur said. “Always, for many, many years later, it was an important part of his life.”