U.S. forces safely rescued the second F-15E crew member of a two-seat fighter jet that went down over Iran on Friday, two U.S. officials said late Saturday.
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Details of the rescue were unavailable, but the sources said the second airman was pulled from Iran safely, with rescue crews also out of harm’s way.
“He sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” President Donald Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social, adding that the airman is a “highly respected Colonel.”
The plane’s pilot was located shortly after the crash.
The F-15E strike happened as the president and his administration have received heavy criticism over the war. On Saturday, Trump characterized the rescue as a major triumph in the effort.
“The United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History,” he said.
The president credited his military leaders for their diligence, and said he ordered “dozens” of aircraft with lethal weapons to join the search.
“The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” the president said.
Rescue crews and other special operation forces had been searching for the second airman, known as the backseater or weapons systems officer, since Friday.
Iran shot down the F-15E Strike Eagle, a U.S. official said, and the American military was scrambling to find the second aviator after, official and semi-official Iranian news organizations reported, a regional governor offered a bounty for its crew; a representative of merchants and businesses was reportedly offering the equivalent of $60,000.
Iran’s media published photos alongside claims from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that it had shot down the F-15E. Nour News, an outlet linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, said the jet “was destroyed in the skies over central Iran by a new advanced air defense system of the IRGC Aerospace Force.”
This appears to be the first time that a U.S. aircraft has gone down inside Iran as part of this latest conflict, dispelling the notion that the U.S. has complete control over the Iranian airspace. In recent days, the U.S. has ramped up the number of bombing runs over the country.
A governor of Iran’s Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province earlier denied reports that the second American crew member had been arrested. The governor also denied that the first pilot had been rescued, calling it a “tactic of the enemy.”
In a brief phone interview on Friday, Trump was asked if Iran’s takedown of the aircraft would negatively affect any negotiations to end the war. “No, not at all,” the president replied. “No, it’s war.”
Iran has claimed previously to have struck American military planes, but the U.S. has not confirmed any such incidents during the war.
A U.S. aircraft that was mobilized to support the search and rescue mission was also struck by Iranian fire after the F-15E jet was downed, a U.S. official told NBC News Friday.
That aircraft, a single-pilot A-10 Thunderbolt, known as a Warthog, made it to Kuwaiti airspace, where the pilot ejected and the aircraft crashed, the official said. The pilot is safe and the A-10 is down in Kuwait, according to the official.
A U.S. official and Peter Layton, a former officer in the Australian air force and visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia, told NBC News the aircraft was likely based at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, where the U.S. Air Force 48th Fighter Wing is based.
