Testimony of an American aviator after the crash of his F-15E in Iran

An exceptional document. The American show 60 Minutes, broadcast on CBS, delivered on Sunday the testimony of the US Air Force aviator who was on board the F-15E Strike Eagle shot down last April in Iran. He had to spend around fifty hours hiding in the Iranian mountains before being rescued by a large-scale rescue mission. Images of this operation, declassified by the American Department of Defense, have also been released.

“Dude 44”, co-pilot and weapons systems officer who was in the two-seater with the pilot, was carrying out a mission that night of April 2 “like the others, until the moment we were hit by an Iranian weapon,” he says. A portable surface-to-air missile, worth around $100,000, reached the American device, estimated at $30 million. It was like “getting hit by a freight train.”

It falls at a speed between 110 and 160 km/hour

The two aviators had no choice but to activate their ejection seats. If the pilot was ejected safely, and was rescued after a few hours by American forces, “Dude 44”, whose parachute was damaged by the impact of the Iranian missile, landed, eight kilometers further, falling at a dizzying speed, estimated between 110 and 160 km/hour. “At one point, when I looked up and didn’t see any parachutes, it was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen,” he recounted in his first public account of the incident.

Although he survived miraculously, he suffered several fractures in his back, arm and shoulder. “Despite my injuries, I got away from where I had landed as quickly as possible. » Without water or food, he then undertakes the ascent of a cliff of more than 2,000 meters, at the top of which he decides to take refuge in a crevasse, and succeeds in sending a message. It will take two days for help to arrive.

Airplane landing gear stuck in sand

More than 90 American soldiers were deployed on the ground, several hundred were mobilized by air and several thousand participated in this extraordinary rescue operation. Rescuers arrived aboard two C-130Js, large search and rescue planes, and landed on a makeshift runway in the middle of the desert. They then deployed small “Little Bird” helicopters capable of reaching the aviator on the ridge, several kilometers away.