Hiding alone in a mountain crevice behind enemy lines, the injured American airman knew exactly what to do: survive and evade.
For more than a day, the weapons systems officer whose F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down inside Iran avoided being captured by encroaching Iranian forces. At one point, he scaled the rugged terrain to a ridgeline 7,000 feet above sea level, equipped with little more than a pistol, a communication device and a tracking beacon.
How the US military rescued its airman
CNN’s Jim Sciutto breaks down what we know about the US military’s dangerous and complex mission to rescue an airman who went down in Iran.
How the US military rescued its airman
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It was into the high mountains that a team of American commandos, accompanied by US aircraft dropping bombs to clear the area, swarmed to locate the officer, bringing him and themselves to safety.
Two US officials described the details of the risky operation afterward.
It involved hundreds of American military and intelligence personnel, including special operations forces who carried out the successful rescue mission, and CIA operatives who mounted a deception campaign beforehand to throw off potential Iranian captors.
And it came with multiple twists, including a pair of damaged US special operations aircraft that the US had to blow up on the ground in Iran during the operation.
“WE GOT HIM!” President Trump wrote on social media after spending Saturday monitoring the operation from the White House. “Over the past several hours, the United States Military pulled off one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History.”
The race to find and recover the officer had quickly become an all-consuming endeavor for the administration after the fighter jet was shot down on Friday. The pilot of the plane was found quickly, but the White House and Pentagon refused to confirm the rescue as a second, more prolonged mission to find his crewmate was underway.
Read the full account here.