From the Liveblog of
Sunday, April 5, 2026
‘They got lucky’: Trump says Iran shot down the F-15 with a shoulder-fired missile
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Elaborating on his earlier interview with US President Donald Trump about the rescue of two US airmen shot down over Iran on Friday, Barak Ravid of Channel 12 and Axios says Trump told him that the Iranian military downed the F-15, with its two-man crew, using a shoulder-fired missile. “They got lucky.”
“We rescued the pilot [on Friday] quickly, in daylight,” Ravid quotes Trump telling him. “That’s something that isn’t generally done. We are better at night operations. There was a lot of shooting in the first rescue operation.”
Turning to the case of the weapons system officer, Trump, as quoted by Ravid on Channel 12, said that the crewman gave a short, unusual message over his radio after ejecting from the aircraft. “He said: ‘God is good.’ We suspected that maybe the Iranians had captured him, because that sounded like something a Muslim would say.”
“We suspected that the Iranians were sending us fake signals and that it was a trap. In the end, we managed to confirm that it was really him. People who know him also said he is a very religious guy,” Trump went on.
Trump further said that “thousands of these savages were hunting him down,” using what Ravid described as a loaded term to refer to members of the Iranian military. “Even the population was looking for him. They offered people a bonus if they captured him.”
But the crewman managed to hide in a crevice in the mountainside. The US located him with technological means, Trump said.
“Other countries would not have endangered 200 soldiers and 10 aircraft for one soldier. But we did it,” Ravid quotes Trump saying.
Trump told Ravid that Israel helped “a little bit” in the rescue operation, but most of it was American. The Israelis “have been good partners. They have been great and brave people. We are like a big brother and little brother,” Trump said.
Ravid quotes unnamed American officials saying Israel’s assistance was with intelligence on the general area where the rescue operation unfolded, and not specifically regarding the crewman.
“The two crew members were spread apart by a couple miles,” Ravid quotes a US defense official saying. “Hundreds of IRGC soldiers were everywhere.”
He also quotes Israeli officials saying the Israeli Air Force conducted one strike to prevent Iranian forces from reaching the area.
The Times of Israel Community.