The second crew member of a downed F-15E fighter jet has been rescued by US commandos overnight, ending a dramatic two-day search after the warplane crashed in south-west Iran.
The crew member, a colonel and weapons systems officer, had sustained some injuries but was successfully extracted by US special forces, Donald Trump said in a social media post soon after midnight EST.
The US president called the operation to recover the airman “one of most daring search and rescue operations in U.S history” – and claimed that not a “single American” had been killed or wounded in the operation.
“At my direction, the U.S. Military sent dozens of aircraft, armed with the most lethal weapons in the World, to retrieve him. He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.
Initial reports indicated that once located, the colonel was rescued by a special forces team under a hail of heavy covering fire. Three Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed, according to Iranian sources.
Iran’s military said on Sunday that it had destroyed three US aircraft involved in the search operation. State media shared images of charred wreckage scattered across a desert area, with smoke still emanating from the site.
Footage emerged of what was said to be night-time clashes in Iran’s Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, near the city of Dehdasht, about 30 miles from the coast in the south-west of the country, the area where US searches had been taking place.
The pilot of the aircraft had been rescued on Friday, after the F-15E Strike Eagle became the first US plane to be downed over Iran during the five-week-long war, but the second member of the crew could not be located immediately.
The US air force launched a massive search and rescue effort, using low-flying Pave Hawk helicopters and specialist C-130 Hercules transport. There were reports that at least one Hercules had to be destroyed on the ground in Iran because it had run into difficulties.
The CIA took more than a day to locate the missing airman, according to a report in Axios, and launched a disinformation campaign in Iran to give the impression that he had been found in order to fool Iranian forces on the ground. After more than a day the intelligence agency located him, the report added.
Uncrewed Reaper drones were used to protect the airman once he had been located, by “striking Iranian military-aged males believed to be a threat who got within three kilometer” according to a correspondent with the US Air & Space Forces Magazine, who said he had been briefed on the operation.
Military pilots said the missing F-15 crew member would have been trying to hide for as long as possible from the Iranian military. If possible, the colonel would have tried to transmit their location relative to a known secret point in the hope that US special forces coming in via helicopter would be able to rescue them.
It was not clear exactly how the F-15 was downed, although Iran said it had shot it down. The US military did not publicly comment, while Trump, said on Friday the episode would not affect efforts to negotiate a peace settlement with Iran.
The US military had not had a jet shot down by enemy fire in more than 20 years – since a warplane was downed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq – retired air force Brig Gen Houston Cantwell told the Associated Press.
Iranian media released pictures of a wreckage, including a distinctive F-15 tail fin, and a used ejector seat on Friday, with state media and businesses in the country offering a bounty if the missing crew member could be captured.
It also emerged that a Pave Hawk helicopter was hit by fire from the ground during the rescue of the pilot on Friday, but it was able to fly away successfully. Another combat plane, an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft, crashed near the strait of Hormuz with Iran claiming it had shot it down. Its pilot was rescued.
The loss of the F-15 and other aircraft had come as a relative surprise, given the air superiority the US and Israel have established over Iran from the beginning of the five-week-long war. But it demonstrated that after thousands of bombing missions, Iran still has the capacity to inflict high-profile damage on the US.
Trump said the US would never leave an American warfighter behind, committing the country’s military to similar rescue efforts if any more planes are brought down.
