UPDATED 4:31 PM MST! CLAIM: Iran Shot Down U.S. F-15E and has CAPTURED the Pilots (PHOTOS from Iran)
- Apr 3
- 4 min read
Source: Hal Turner
Reports are coming out of the Middle East this morning CLAIMING Iran has successfully SHOT DOWN a United States F-15E fighter jet. They provided photos of the smashed jet parts on the ground, and of an Advanced Ejection Seat. They are now reporting they have "captured the Pilots."
Developing . . . check back
Iranian News Claim reported by the NY Times:
Iran War Live Updates: One American Rescued From Fighter Jet Downed Over Iran, Officials Say
The fate of a second airman shot down in a F-15E warplane was unknown. It was the first time during the five-week war that a U.S. warplane had been brought down over Iran.
A video posted to social media and verified by The Times shows U.S. military aircraft flying over southwest Iran, apparently conducting search and rescue operations after an American fighter jet was downed.CreditCredit...Social Media
Another Source: Air & Space Forces
A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle was downed over Iran, and combat search and rescue efforts are underway April 3, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.
One crew member has been rescued so far and is alive, sources said. The status of the second crew member is not yet publicly known. The jet has a two-person crew with a pilot and a weapons systems officer.
Initial U.S. indications suggest the jet was shot down.
Iran claimed to have downed a U.S. fighter overnight and posted photos purportedly showing the jet’s wreckage.
Those photos, circulated by Iranian media, appear to show wreckage from an F-15E, but they could not be immediately authenticated. U.S. Central Command and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Videos on social media, purportedly taken in southwestern Iran, show U.S. aircraft flying low, possibly to conduct combat search-and-rescue operations.
This would mark the first known combat loss of a U.S. manned aircraft during the conflict. A U.S. Air Force F-35 pilot suffered shrapnel wounds after their aircraft was damaged during a combat mission over Iran on March 19, but the plane was able to make an emergency landing at a U.S. air base. Three USAF F-15Es were shot down by friendly fire over Kuwait on March 2, with all six crew members ejecting safely. And a KC-135 tanker crashed in western Iraq after an apparent midair collision with another U.S. aircraft, resulting in the deaths of six Airmen.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Another Source with Photos from Iran: TWZ
Iran’s armed forces claim that a U.S. fighter jet has been shot down over the country. According to Iranian state media, a U.S. F-35 was downed, although photos of the wreckage of a fighter on the ground point squarely to the aircraft involved being a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle — provided they are legitimate.
UPDATE: See latest info on the loss of the F-15E over Iran and the ongoing combat search and rescue operation at the bottom of this post.
A spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya central headquarters said today that an F-35 was brought down over the central part of the country by a new type of air defense system operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with little chance the pilot survived, Reuters reports. The F-15E carries two aircrew, while the F-35 is a single-seater. At this point, we have no firm indication of the fate of the crew if such an incident did indeed take place.
It also remains possible that the images of the wreckage have been manipulated, and we are dealing with misinformation. However, the photos appear genuine and are certainly consistent with parts of an F-15E, including one of the vertical tails, and parts of the wing and tail. There is also the possibility that the images derive from an earlier F-15E loss, which we will come to later.
We should also consider that the F-15E could have come down for multiple reasons other than being shot down by air defenses, as Iran claims. Potentially, the jet could have been hit and lost its tail and even part of its wing, before returning to safe airspace. That might sound incredible, but F-15s have done this before.
Iran might also be presenting some other F-15E wreckage. Iran has collected many wrecks of foreign aircraft over the years, but where this one would have come from is not clear.
Previous documented F-15E crashes in the Middle East or Afghanistan don’t involve aircraft from the 494th Fighter Squadron, as far as we can ascertain. Specifically, since Desert Storm (when the 48th Fighter Wing operated F-111s, not F-15Es), these (non-combat) losses occurred in Iraq (April 2003, 335th FS, 4th FW), Afghanistan (July 2009, 336th FS, 4th FW), and Libya (March 2011, 492nd FS, 48th FW).
Hours before the F-35 claim, the IRGC released a video of what it said showed the successful shootdown of a U.S. F-15 over Qeshm Island, in the Strait of Hormuz. In this case, they attributed the claimed shootdown to an unnamed advanced naval air defense system. The video shows the typical ground-based FLIR systems we have seen in use by air defenses in Yemen and, more recently, Iran. The video does not show the aircraft being struck, but it does show it maneuvering and releasing flares.
Updated 4:31 PM MST
