A U.S. Air Force officer whose F-15 fighter was shot down over western Iran was rescued by U.S. forces early Sunday after evading capture for more than a day in enemy territory, President Trump announced on Truth Social.
“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. He called the mission “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History” and said the airman was a colonel who “was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran.”
Two crew members ejected when the jet was hit. The pilot was rescued shortly after the shoot-down; the colonel, a weapons officer, could not immediately be reached, prompting a massive U.S. rescue effort involving dozens of aircraft, Trump said.
A U.S. official, speaking on background, said three of the rescue aircraft flying at low altitude were struck by Iranian fire. One was an A-10 Warthog; its pilot managed to keep the plane airborne until reaching Kuwaiti airspace, where he ejected and was recovered. Two helicopters were also hit but returned safely to base, the official said.
Multiple videos over the weekend showed aircraft resembling American search-and-rescue planes operating in southwestern Iran. NPR geolocated one video to a bridge in Khuzestan province, in a mountainous area roughly 100 miles inland.
Trump framed the operation as proof of “overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” a claim some analysts have questioned given that U.S. jets were shot down. These were the first U.S. fighter jets downed in more than two decades; the last occurred in 2003 during the Iraq war.
Earlier in March, a U.S. F-35 was hit by a missile, sustaining significant damage and injuring its pilot; the aircraft returned to base but made a hard landing, NPR reported at the time.
Since the war with Iran began six weeks ago, 13 U.S. service members have died in airstrikes and in an aircraft refueling crash in Iraq. An attack on a Saudi airbase also wounded more than a dozen U.S. troops, several seriously.
Greg Myre in Washington contributed to reporting.