US forces safely rescued the second F-15E crew member of a two-seat fighter jet that downed over Iran on Friday, two US officials said late Saturday.
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The second airman was safely evacuated from Iran, the sources said, adding that rescuers were also out of harm’s way.
“He’s hurt, but he’s going to be OK,” President Donald Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. He said the airman is a “highly respected colonel.”
The pilot of the plane was located soon after the crash.
A senior Trump administration official told NBC News that the rescue of the second crew member was possible with the help of the CIA.
The intelligence agency first launched a deception operation inside Iran, saying the U.S. military had already found the airman alive and was being flown on the ground to fly him out of the country, the official said.
“While the Iranians were confused and unsure what was happening, the agency used its unique, excellent capabilities to search and find the American,” the official said in a statement. “It was the ultimate ‘needle in a haystack’, but in this case it was a brave American soul inside a mountain crevice, invisible but to the capabilities of the CIA.”
The CIA immediately alerted the Defense Department and the White House to the crew member’s location, with the president ordering an immediate rescue operation “which DOW executed with courage and precision, while the CIA continued to provide real-time information,” the official said, using an acronym for the War Department, which the administration informally renamed the Department of Defense.
The F-15E attack came as the President and his administration faced heavy criticism over the war. On Saturday, Trump hailed the rescue as a major victory in the effort.
“The United States military executed one of the most daring search and rescue operations in American 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 President said, “The fact that we were able to conduct both of these missions without a single American being killed or injured proves once again that we have achieved overwhelming air dominance and superiority over Iranian skies.”
Rescue teams and other special operations forces had been searching since Friday for the second airman, known as a backsitter or weapons systems officer.
Iran shot down an F-15E Strike Eagle, a US official said, and after official and semi-official Iranian news organizations reported US forces were struggling to find a second aviator, a regional governor offered a reward for its crew; A representative of merchants and businesses was reportedly offering as much as $60,000.
Iranian media published photos with claims from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that it had shot down the F-15E. Noor 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 US plane has gone down inside Iran as part of this latest conflict, dispelling the perception that the US has full control over Iranian airspace. In recent days, the US has increased the number of bombings in the country.
A governor of Iran’s Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad provinces previously denied reports that a second US crew member had been arrested. The governor also denied that the pilot had been rescued in the first place, calling it an “enemy tactic.”
In a brief phone interview on Friday, Trump was asked whether Iran’s removal of the aircraft would have a negative impact on any negotiations to end the war. The President replied, “No, not at all.” “No, this is war.”
Iran has previously claimed to have attacked US military aircraft, but the US has not confirmed any such incidents during the war.
A US plane sent to assist in search and rescue operations after the downed F-15E jet also came under Iranian fire, a US official told NBC News on Friday.
That plane, a single-pilot A-10 Thunderbolt, known as the Warthog, reached Kuwaiti airspace, where the pilot ejected and the plane crashed, the official said. According to the official, the pilot is safe and the A-10 has fallen in Kuwait.
Peter Layton, a US officer and former Australian Air Force officer and visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia, told NBC News that the plane was likely based at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, where the US Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing is based.
