President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that US forces recovered a missing American pilot, calling the mission one of the most daring search-and-rescue operations in US history amid heightened tensions with Iran.
Trump said the service member was a senior officer, a colonel, who had been stranded behind enemy lines in mountainous terrain in Iran after his aircraft went down. He said the colonel was wounded but ‘‘safe and sound.’’
According to the president, the recovery involved multiple aircraft and extensive planning and oversight by senior US military leaders and was completed without any American casualties. The announcement follows reports that Iran shot down two US military aircraft on Friday — an F-15E Strike Eagle and an A-10 Thunderbolt II — and the missing officer was believed to have been part of the F-15 crew.
Trump also said a separate operation the previous day had recovered another American pilot. That earlier mission was kept confidential at the time, he said, to avoid endangering the second recovery. He described the pair of rescues as unprecedented, saying it was the first time two US pilots had been retrieved from deep inside hostile territory in separate missions.
Emphasizing US military capability, Trump said the operations showed ‘‘overwhelming air dominance’’ over Iranian skies and reiterated that the United States would never leave an American warfighter behind. There was no immediate response from Iranian authorities to the president’s statements.
