Downed US airman said to have directed strikes on Iranian positions from hiding place

As the US weapons officer whose fighter jet was downed over Iran hid in a mountain ridge waiting for American troops to rescue him, he helped direct airstrikes against the Islamic Republic’s advancing forces via emergency communications equipment, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The airman, whose plane was shot down Friday morning, had “hiked up a 7,000-foot ridgeline and wedged himself into a crevice,” the report said, citing American military officials, and echoing earlier statements by US President Donald Trump.

“From his hiding place, the weapons officer alerted his rescuers to the areas they should target for strikes, where he could see Iranians advancing,” the Times said, citing a senior military official.

The report said that Israel had worked with the US to gather intelligence to determine if the airman was alone, and had carried out strikes along with the US to provide cover to the American commandos during the rescue operation.

The newspaper noted that it was unclear how close Iranian forces got to the officer’s hiding place, adding that there was no firefight between US and Iranian troops, and that the area in which the officer fell is “strongly opposed to the Iranian regime,” according to US officials.

Though American forces were trying to rescue the officer from the moment the jet was shot down, they did not receive any sign of life from him for about 14 hours, the report said, echoing earlier reporting that the airman was unconscious upon landing and initially unable to make contact.

According to the Times, it then took hours to determine the airman’s location and confirm that it was in fact him. This process was aided by “a special piece of technology” unique to the CIA, the report said. There were no further details about the system.

It was not immediately clear how this timeline lined up with Trump’s statement to Axios on Sunday that the crewman had radioed a message after ejecting from the aircraft, which a US official had quoted as saying, “God is good.”

The Times report also provided additional details about the malfunction that forced troops to call in replacement aircraft to extract the officer, after a makeshift airstrip constructed for the operation failed.

According to the Times, the airman was meant to fly out of Iran, together with his rescuers, on two C-130 planes, but the nose gear of at least one of them, and possibly both, got stuck in the sand.

According to the report, American forces tried for hours to free the stuck wheels, but failed before calling in the three replacements.

“If there was a ‘holy shit’ moment, that was it,” a US official told Reuters, crediting quick decision-making with saving the day.

The official said that the aircraft eventually sent to extract the airman and rescue forces were much smaller turboprop aircraft, capable of landing on small airfields and relatively light.

The original escape planes, as well as four MH-6 special operations helicopters, were bombed from the air after the officer and his rescuers were gone, so that they could not be seized by the Iranian regime.

The Times reported that, when the airman finally sent the signal Friday night using his emergency beacon, US Central Command was preparing a statement that the plane had been downed and that its pilot – who was rescued within hours of the original incident – had been rescued.

The statement was scrapped as soon as the signal from the beacon was received, with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth telling Trump by phone that with the weapons officer still in need of rescue, all information about the pilot’s extraction had to be kept secret.

Media at the time reported on the pilot’s rescue, as well as the search for the weapons officer, though he too was at times identified in reports as a pilot.

Throughout the operation, the White House, the Pentagon and CENTCOM were uncharacteristically silent.

Trump was so relatively quiet that a local reporter went to check if he was at Walter Reed Hospital, according to Reuters.

Trump announced early Sunday that the US had rescued the second aviator nearly two days after he was shot down over Iran.

“This is the first time in military memory that two US Pilots have been rescued, separately, deep in Enemy Territory,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “WE WILL NEVER LEAVE AN AMERICAN WARFIGHTER BEHIND!”

It was the first time the US has lost aircraft in Iranian territory during the ongoing war, which began on February 28, with a wave of US and Israeli airstrikes that killed, among others, then-supreme leader Ali Khamenei.