The desperate search for the missing American pilot of an F-15E that was shot down over Iran stretched into the night Friday — after his co-pilot was rescued in a daring search-and-rescue mission that saw other US aircraft targeted.
Crews were racing against time to find the second pilot of the Strike Eagle, which is believed to have gone down in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province in the southwestern part of the country near Iraq, The New York Times reported. Iranian officials quickly placed a bounty on the pilot’s head, calling on civilians to help capture him or her.
Retired Marine combat pilot Capt. Ron Alvarado told The Post the timing of the attack may bode in the US’s favor in terms of finding the pilot because of better night vision and infrared communication technology than Iranian combatants.
“We own the night,” Alvarado said. “Hopefully, he or she will be rescued by morning.”
Both pilots reportedly ejected from the plane — with one located and rescued by US forces hours later. That pilot was being medically treated.
The Strike Eagle has an emergency locator beacon as part of a survival kit that can be activated automatically or manually, Alan Diehl, a former investigator for the Air Force Safety Center, said.
Other US aircraft were caught in the crosshairs as crew members rushed into action after the first plane plunged to the ground.
A second fighter plane crashed in the Persian Gulf area after it was struck by Iranian forces – but the lone pilot was safely rescued, according to US officials.
The A-10 Thunderbolt, also known as a Warthog, was able to reach Kuwaiti airspace, where the pilot ejected and the plane crashed, an official told NBC News.
Iran also struck a pair of US military helicopters involved in the F-15E rescue, but all crew members are safe, a US official told NBC News.
Some of the crew were injured, but the choppers safely returned to their case, the Washington Post reported.
The F-15E is the first US aircraft to be shot down in Iran during Operation Epic Fury, in which the US and Israel have launched 20,000 strikes on the evil regime as the war stretched into its sixth week.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed its “newly developed and advanced air defenses” had downed the jet, which was “completely destroyed and crashed,” Tehran’s Press TV reported.
A photo circulating online appeared to show one of the ejected seats.
The anchor of a local affiliate of the state TV broadcaster earlier urged Iranians to hunt down the downed “enemy” pilots.
“If you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police, you will receive a precious prize,” the anchor said, according to the Associated Press.
President Trump, in a brief NBC News interview Friday afternoon, declined to discuss the specifics of the ongoing search for the outstanding pilot but insisted the series of strikes against US jets and choppers won’t sidetrack negotiations.
“No, not at all. No, it’s war,” he said. “We’re in war.”
Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have boasted about how the operation against Tehran has knocked out much of Iran’s capabilities.
Hegseth said in early March near the start of the war that the US was “establishing total dominance over the skies we fly over and seas we fly over.”
Meanwhile, Trump, in a primetime address to the nation Wednesday, said thanks to progress made during the war, his administration was “on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly.”
More than 90% of Tehran’s missile and drone capacities have been eliminated in the month-long war, US officials have said. Still, Trump has refused to rule out putting American boots on the ground during the conflict.
On Friday, Iran used the successful attacks to taunt the US.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf criticized the US in an X post Friday that its “no-strategy war … has now been downgraded from ‘regime change’ to ‘Hey! Can anyone find our pilots? Please?’”
A US F-35A was also damaged over Iran on March 19 during a combat mission, and 16 MQ-9 drones have been shot down. Three American F-15 fighter jets were also shot down over Kuwait in a friendly fire incident.
Hegseth revealed in a Pentagon news conference that the six downed crew members in those jets had “never left the theater” and returned to drop bombs on Tehran Tuesday.
Since the start of the war, 365 US service members have been wounded in action while the death toll is at 13, according to the Pentagon data available online.
It’s unclear if Friday’s incidents have been included in those figures.
With Post wires and Natalie O’Neill