Perched in a precarious mountain-top ravine with only a pistol for defense, a U.S. Air Force colonel faced a grim situation as armed tribesmen closed in on his position. The likelihood of survival seemed dim.
Yet, thanks to what is being hailed as the most audacious Special Forces rescue operation in U.S. history, the colonel is now safely out of Iran. This remarkable extraction involved a massive deployment of Special Forces commandos, a strategic CIA drone operation, and some innovative problem-solving to prevent a last-minute catastrophe.
Here’s a look at how this extraordinary rescue mission played out.
On Saturday, a large contingent of Special Forces launched a daring mission deep within Iranian territory. This initiative followed an initial rescue attempt that successfully extracted one of the two crew members who had ejected near the town of Talkhuncheh. However, the second crewman remained stranded, prompting a more elaborate and bold operation to ensure his safe return.
Hundreds of special forces launched a mission deep inside Iran on Saturday after an initial rescue only managed to save one of the two crewmen who ejected near the town of Talkhuncheh.
The remaining weapons systems officer hiked through the mountains while evading Iranian search parties and using his rescue beacon sparingly – before he was eventually located by the CIA.
Drones then watched over him and killed any Iranians who got within three kilometres before special forces flew in to a desert airstrip near his location.
SEAL Team 6 commandos rescued the officer from the mountain top by helicopter and then returned to the nearby desert airstrip.
However two transport planes and one helicopter became stuck in the mud and unable to take off, leaving more military personnel stranded behind enemy lines as Basij fighters closed in on their botched rescue site.
Three more transport planes were flown in to evacuate the downed airman and the rescue party, as they were evacuated under gunfire from the advancing Iranians.
Miraculously, the forces escaped unharmed in what is being hailed as the most daring US special operation in history.
As they left, the Americans were forced to ‘blow up’ their own stricken planes and helicopter, to prevent them falling into the hands of the Iranian military.
It was a move likely to have cost millions of dollars to the US military and showed the urgency of the US forces to evacuate under extreme pressure.
Iranian media claimed they shot down the two transport planes, but provided no evidence to support the suggestion.
They later claimed that the US mission had failed and branded the rescue story as a ‘cover up’ to Trump’s heavy defeat.
Donald Trump branded the mission a huge success, saying it proved the Americans’ ‘dominance and superiority’ over the Iranian skies.
The C-130 transport planes were seen completely destroyed on the remote airfield inside Iran
Trump touted the success of the rescue mission on Saturday evening in a Truth social post
Injured after ejecting from an F-15 E Strike Eagle fighter jet which had been gunned down over Iran, stuck in a treacherous mountain range deep behind enemy lines and armed with just a handgun for protection, the situation could hardly have been more bleak for the stricken colonel.
He became separated from the pilot after they both ejected near the village of Talkhuncheh, Isfahan Province.
Iranian forces were quickly made aware of his presence and offered a $60,000 reward for his capture, leading Basij militia to advance on the mountain roads below.
The brave colonel, injured but mobile, trekked 70 miles and climbed to 7,000 feet where he activated his emergency beacon and lay low for nearly two days, hoping for an unlikely rescue.
Although he could use his emergency beacon to contact rescuers, it also risked giving his location away to the enemy and so he used it sparingly to avoid detection.
Meanwhile, the CIA confused the Iranians, spreading word that the colonel had already been located and buying themselves time to locate the airman. He was eventually located by the CIA, who alerted the White House and the Pentagon.
His pilot had already been rescued just hours after the jet went down, after HH-60W Jolly Green 2 helicopters flew in under fire from Iranians.
Two of the helicopters were hit and the crew were injured, but they were able to escape Iranian airspace.
The Americans used A-10 Warthogs to slow down the forces advancing on the colonel’s position, blocking roads around the extraction zone, striking communications towers and approaching vehicles. Iranian officials said at least four were killed in the strikes.
One A-10 Warthog was also hit by fire and later crashed in the Strait of Hormuz. An MC-130J refuelling aircraft was filmed fuelling two helicopters over the crash site.
Iranian broadcasters then urged locals to seize the American, telling viewers: ‘If you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police you will receive a precious prize.’
Fearing the colonel could be captured, the Americans then launched their daring rescue attempt and flew hundreds of special forces into Iranian airspace to rescue one man, at great risk to themselves.
US special forces sent in commandos from the elite SEAL Team 6, also known as DEVGRU and landed at a desert airstrip near the town of Mahyar.
The Navy Seals flew in four MH-6 Little Bird helicopters and rescued the officer from the mountain top, before returning to the desert airstrip.
As they attempted to evacuate, disaster struck when the C-130 planes became stuck in the dirt and unable to take off, leaving dozens of US forces now also stuck behind enemy lines.
Escaping under gunfire proved how close the forces came to disaster.
They were forced to destroy their stranded aircraft as they escaped, leaving millions of dollars worth of American air power in pieces in the Iranian mountains.
President Trump celebrated ‘one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History’, but victory had been snatched from the jaws of defeat.
The remaining three rescue planes flew out of Iran to Kuwait and the mission was completed just before midnight.
US forces involved in the rescue mission were forced to destroy two of their own planes after they became stuck in the remote Iranian airbase
Iranian state media released images of the search and rescue planes which it claimed it shot down, though the US military says it ‘blew [them] up’ themselves
The two stranded aircraft were destroyed to prevent them from falling into IRGC hands, sources told The New York Times.
An MH-6 Little Bird helicopter was also destroyed after it was damaged before evacuation, according to reports.
Iranian sources said hundreds of soldiers and Basij fighters who tried to interfere with the rescue operation were ‘neutralised’ by American special forces.
Mr Trump said this was the first time in military memory that two US pilots have been rescued, separately, deep in enemy territory, as he defiantly said that no American warfighter would ever be left behind.
He said dozens of aircraft armed with ‘the most lethal weapons in the World’ were sent by the US military to retrieve him.
‘This brave warrior was behind enemy lines in the treacherous mountains of Iran, being hunted down by our enemies, who were getting closer and closer by the hour,’ Trump added in a Truth Social post.
The airman ejected from an F-15E fighter jet along with the aircraft’s pilot in the early hours of Friday, sparking a frantic two-day search operation that culminated in a fierce firefight.
Trump said the aircraft’s pilot was secretly rescued hours after the crash, but that operation was kept quiet to not ‘jeopardize our second rescue operation’.
He added that both operations were concluded ‘without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded’, despite reports of injuries in the pilot’s rescue as well as the colonel’s own injuries.
Iranian media reported five people were killed in strikes during the US rescue operation.
The F-15E jet was downed on Friday soon after a US A-10 Warthog was also shot from the sky by Iranian forces in a chaotic day of fighting, marking the first US aircraft downed since the start of the conflict.
Pictured: The ejected seat from the F-15 fighter jet as published in Iranian media
The Iranian military previously shared footage appearing to show the F-15E fighter jet being blown out of the sky
A second US airman shot down over Iran has been rescued in a daring rescue mission following a fierce firefight with the IRGC, reports say. The wreckage of the pilot’s F-15E fighter jet is pictured
Iranian Revolutionary Guards took credit for the strike with gloating photos of the planes later shared on state media, accompanied by a taunting caption.
On Saturday, the official X account for the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, released harrowing new images of the destroyed F-15E jet, accompanied by a taunting caption.
‘The stealth fighter that now has no escape but to lie under the feet of aerospace warriors,’ the embassy wrote.
‘That same stealth giant, for which they wove legends for years, is today a pile of scrap metal fallen to the ground – this is the very technology they claimed was invisible and untouchable,’ it added. ‘But now it has been seen and brought down.’
Each of the three photos showed what was left of the jet: an unrecognizable mass of burnt debris strewn across a wide, empty stretch of land.
On Friday, a video also showed Iranian bullets being fired at a Black Hawk helicopter which was thought to be involved in the search for the missing F-15 crew.
It came after Trump said earlier on Truth Social that US forces had ‘terminated’ several of Iran’s military leaders, sharing footage appearing to show an airstrike taking out top IRGC commanders.
Trump’s social media posts praising the rescue operations came hours after the White House furiously shut down rumors the president was hospitalized on Saturday.
The government said Trump had not made public appearances in three days because he is focusing on the conflict with Iran.
Following the downing of two US aircrafts on Friday, Iran placed a $60,000 bounty on the heads of the US airmen, vowing to seek revenge on US military forces for the conflict.
While the pilot was rescued quickly, the second member of the crew, a Weapons Systems Officer, used specialized survival techniques to evade capture long enough to be saved, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin said in an X post on Saturday night.
The soldier used SERE – survival, evasion, resistance and escape – training to evade capture, hiking up an elevated ridge away from the wreckage and putting out an emergency beacon in hopes of being located.
Griffin said a number of Iranian military forces were killed and injured in the operation, but no US soldiers were killed.
Trump said earlier on Truth Social that US forces had ‘terminated’ several of Iran’s military leaders, sharing footage appearing to show an airstrike taking out top IRGC commanders
A US official told Fox News the mission was ‘very complex’, and involved several branches of the US military to find and rescue the airman.
During search and rescue operations on Friday, two rescue helicopters were hit by Iranian forces and crew members on board were injured.
As Iranian forces closed in on the stranded airman, footage circulating on social media appeared to show members of Iran’s Bakhtiari tribes in Khuzestan heading into the mountains, rifles in hand, to search for the American soldier.
Trump declined to comment on how he would respond if the airman were to have been harmed.
In a gloating online statement, Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf taunted the US and Trump over his repeated claims of winning the war.
‘After defeating Iran 37 times in a row, this brilliant no-strategy war they started has now been downgraded from “regime change” to “Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?”,’ Ghalibaf wrote.
The announcement of the rescue came as Iran launched missiles and drones at Israel and Kuwait early Sunday, and a day after Trump said the Islamic republic had 48 hours to cut a deal or face ‘all Hell’.
The President referred to an ultimatum he issued on March 26, saying: ‘Remember when I gave Iran ten days to MAKE A DEAL or OPEN UP THE HORMUZ STRAIT, Time is running out – 48 hours before all Hell will reign (sic) down on them.’
Iran’s central military command rejected the ultimatum, with General Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi saying Trump’s threat was a ‘helpless, nervous, unbalanced and stupid action’.
Echoing Trump’s language, he warned that ‘the gates of hell will open for you’.
Pakistan has offered to mediate efforts to end the war and, according to Iranian media, Pakistan’s foreign minister and his Iranian counterpart spoke by phone on Saturday.
However, there was no sign of a let up in the violence, and Kuwait and Israel said their air defences were responding Sunday to the latest attacks from Iran.
The United Arab Emirates also said its air defences were responding to missile attacks that Tehran said were targeting the country’s aluminium industries, while Bahrain officials reported a fire at a refinery ‘as a result of Iranian aggression’.
How the daring extraction unfolded
A F-15 E Strike Eagle is apparently hit by Iranian fire. Tehran said it is deploying new anti-aircraft weapons and there are suspicions an advanced passive infrared detection system was used to guide a missile. Both pilot and weapons systems officer eject.
Weapons systems officer, a lieutenant colonel, is injured during the ejection and becomes separated from the pilot. US special forces HH-60W Jolly Green 2 helicopters fly in and come under fire from Iranians. They rescue the pilot but are unable to reach the other crewman. Two helicopters are hit and the crew are injured but they are able to escape Iranian airspace. An A-10 Warthog was also hit by fire and later crashed in the Strait of Hormuz. An MC-130J refuelling aircraft is filmed fuelling two helicopters over the crash site. Iranians are also filmed firing at one rescue helicopter.
The Weapons Systems Officer starts hiking away from the wreck site and evades detection by Iranian Forces. Armed with just a hand gun and injured but mobile, the senior officer headed for higher ground. The experienced colonel used his SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape), an escape doctrine drilled into every American combat aircrew. He activated his emergency beacon and lay low, waiting for an unlikely rescue. Although he could use his emergency beacon to contact rescuers, it also risked giving his location away to the enemy.
American forces hunt for the officer, while he hiked at least 20 kilometres and climbed 7,000 feet up a mountain. He is eventually located by the CIA, although it is unclear how. The CIA starts a deception operation to convince Iranians that the officer has already been rescued. MQ-9 Reaper Drones watch over the officer and attack any Iranians who get within 3 kilometres of his location. Two drones were shot down and they attacked mulitple Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps search parties. Iranian media offers a $60,000 reward for the capture of the officer.
US special forces launch a second rescue mission with commandos from the elite SEAL Team 6, also known as DEVGRU and land at a desert airstrip near the town of Mahyar. The Navy Seals fly in four MH-6 Little Birds and rescue the officer from the mountain top, before returning to the desert airstrip.
The two C-130 aircraft got stuck in the dirt at the desert landing strip, forcing the US to deploy three new Dash-8 rescue aircrafts. The commandos blow up the two stuck aircraft and at least one helicopter, to deny them to the enemy, before making their escape.
![Iranian state media released images of the search and rescue planes which it claimed it shot down, though the US military says it 'blew [them] up' themselves](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2026/04/05/12/107666215-15707635-Iranian_state_media_released_images_of_the_search_and_rescue_pla-a-4_1775387329998.jpg)
