Objective To explore the risk factors for death due to lung cancer in retired military cadres from Xi’an city. Methods A cohort study was carried out on the retired male military cadres from 22 cadre’s sanitariums in Xi’an, China from 1987 to 2009. A total of 1 268 cadres aged 55 years or older were enrolled in 1987 and followed up in the next 23 years. The endpoint was settled as lung cancer death. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was employed to calculate relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) values. Results The total amount of person-year was 21 300.05 in the study until September 30, 2009, and the average person-year was 16.80 years. Among those suffering from lung cancer, 725 cadres died, 527 were alive and 16 lost of follow-up. Multivariate analysis of Cox model showed that smoking index, histories of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other cancers were risk factors for lung cancer deaths (RR＝1.001, 95%CI: 1.001?1.002; RR＝1.966, 95%CI: 1.261?3.065; RR＝6.628, 95%CI: 2.399?18.317). The risks for deaths were increased significantly with the increasing amount and duration of smoking. Starting smoking before the age of 17 increased the risk of lung cancer by 90.8%. Conclusion Smoking and histories of COPD and other cancers are the risk factors for lung cancer deaths in the cohort of the elderly males, especially those starting to smoke before the age of 17.