Both US Airmen From Downed F-15 Rescued From Inside Iran

Both US Airmen From Downed F-15 Rescued From Inside Iran

Quick Reads

• A US F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down by Iranian air defences in southwestern Iran on Friday, April 3, marking the first time a US fighter jet has been downed in enemy combat in over 20 years.
• The aircraft’s pilot was rescued from Iranian territory within hours of the shootdown, though the rescue helicopter was struck by small arms fire during the operation.
• The second crew member, a weapons systems officer and colonel, spent more than a day evading Iranian forces in mountainous terrain before US special forces extracted him early Sunday.
• The CIA ran a deliberate deception operation inside Iran to misdirect search parties and used “unique capabilities” to pinpoint the airman’s exact location before the rescue was launched.
• Iran’s IRGC separately claimed it downed a US C-130-class aircraft during the rescue effort, a claim Washington had not confirmed as of Sunday.

US special forces have rescued both crew members of an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet shot down by Iranian air defenses on Friday, April 3, President Donald Trump confirmed in a Truth Social post on Sunday. The second airman, whom Trump identified as a colonel and weapons systems officer, was pulled from Iranian mountain terrain early Sunday after spending more than 36 hours evading capture, with injuries that officials say are not life-threatening. The mission concluded a high-risk operation conducted deep inside Iran’s borders, drawing on a combination of special forces firepower and CIA intelligence to locate the missing officer.

The F-15E, believed to be from the 48th Fighter Wing based at RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, was brought down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps using what Iranian state media described as a “new advanced air defense system.” Both crew members ejected safely, with the pilot rescued within hours of the shootdown on Friday. During that first operation, an Iranian-struck Black Hawk helicopter carrying the rescued pilot was hit by small arms fire, wounding crew members on board, though the aircraft landed safely. A supporting A-10 Warthog was also struck and went down in Kuwaiti airspace; its pilot ejected and was recovered.

The search for the second crew member became a parallel race between US and Iranian forces. Regional Iranian officials offered a bounty, reportedly worth the equivalent of $60,000, for anyone who located the Americans, and Iranian state TV called on civilians in the area to join the hunt. US intelligence countered this by launching a deliberate deception campaign inside Iran, according to a senior administration official cited by multiple outlets, spreading word that the airman had already been found and was being moved by ground convoy. The CIA simultaneously used what it described as “unique capabilities” to track the colonel to a mountain crevice, sharing his precise location with the Pentagon before Trump ordered the rescue mission to proceed.

Al Jazeera correspondent Jon Hendren, reporting from Washington, said US forces had encircled the airman and the extraction went on for hours in daylight, an unusual choice for special operations missions of this kind. Trump confirmed the colonel had sustained injuries but said he would make a full recovery. “This miraculous search and rescue operation comes in addition to a successful rescue of another brave pilot yesterday, which we did not confirm because we did not want to jeopardise our second rescue operation,” Trump wrote. Iran’s IRGC separately claimed it shot down a US C-130-class aircraft involved in the rescue effort over Isfahan province on Sunday, releasing images purporting to show wreckage. The US had not commented on that claim at the time of publication.

The shootdown came less than 48 hours after Trump declared in a prime-time address that Iran had been “completely decimated” and that its air and radar capabilities had been “100% annihilated.” The incident marks the first confirmed hostile downing of a US fighter jet in combat in more than 20 years, according to retired Air Force Brigadier General Houston Cantwell, a former F-16 pilot who spoke to the Associated Press. Earlier in the conflict, three US F-15s were destroyed in a friendly-fire incident involving Kuwaiti air defences on March 1, with no casualties. The US–Iran war, now in its sixth week, has resulted in at least 13 American deaths and 365 troops wounded in action, according to available Pentagon data.