President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House before signing an executive order Tuesday, March 31, 2026, in Washington.
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Alex Brandon/AP
A U.S. Airforce officer whose plane was shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. forces early Sunday after evading capture for more than a day in enemy territory, President Trump announced on social media.
“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 said on Truth Social.
The officer’s F-15 fighter jet was shot down on Friday over western Iran, and Trump said “one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History” was undertaken to rescue him.
Trump said the airman was a colonel and “was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran.”
He was one of two crew members who ejected when their jet was hit. The pilot was rescued shortly after the shoot down, but the colonel, a weapons officer, could not immediately be reached.
The U.S. military scrambled to launch a massive rescue operation. President Trump said in his Truth Social post that it involved dozens of aircraft.
Three of those rescue aircraft, which were flying at low altitudes, were also hit by Iranian fire, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
One was an A-10 Warthog. The pilot managed to keep flying until he reached nearby Kuwaiti airspace, where he ejected and was rescued. Two helicopters were hit by Iranian fire, but were able to make it safely back to their base, the U.S. official said.
Numerous videos over the weekend showed planes and helicopters that closely resemble American search and rescue (SAR) aircraft flying in southwestern Iran. NPR was able to geolocate one of the videos to a bridge in the province of Khuzestan. The bridge is located in a mountainous area approximately 100 miles inland.
Trump lauded the rescues as proof “that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies,” but the fact that the pilots were shot down in the first place has caused some analysts to question this assessment, which Trump has made repeatedly.
The two fighter jets were the first shot down in more than twenty years, the last being in 2003 during the war in Iraq.
In mid-March, a U.S. F-35 aircraft was hit by a missile, causing significant damage to the plane and injuring the pilot. NPR was told at the time that the F-35 aircraft was able to return to its base, but the plane made a hard landing.
Since the war with Iran started six weeks ago, 13 U.S. service members have died in airstrikes and also an aircraft refueling crash in Iraq. An attack on a Saudi airbase left more than a dozen U.S. troops wounded, several of them serious.
Greg Myre in Washington contributed to reporting.
