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Trump and Hegseth Detail the Rescue of Two Downed F-15E Crew Members From Inside Iran

April 6, 2026 · Department of War · 1:39:15

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What happened

President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth held a press conference at the White House on April 6, 2026, according to the Department of War’s recording, to detail the rescue of the two crew members of a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle shot down deep inside Iran during Operation Epic Fury. Trump said the jet went down late Thursday night, both crew members ejected alive, and he ordered the armed forces to do whatever was necessary to bring them home despite the risk. He said the first wave deployed 21 military aircraft into hostile airspace in broad daylight over Iran for seven hours, and the pilot was located and extracted by an HH-60 Jolly Green II helicopter under close-range gunfire, with no one injured, as he recounted the operation.

Trump said the second crew member, the weapons systems officer, a colonel, landed miles away, was badly injured, and evaded capture for almost 48 hours by climbing into mountain terrain, treating his own wounds and transmitting his location. The second rescue, he said, involved 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers and 13 rescue aircraft, with decoy activity at seven locations to confuse Iranian forces searching for the officer. He said two large transport planes became bogged down in wet sand at the improvised landing site and were blown up by U.S. forces to keep their equipment from being examined, with lighter aircraft completing the extraction, and that ground crews reassembled three helicopters from a transport in under ten minutes, as he described the operation. Trump also warned that Iran’s entire country could be taken out in one night, and that the night might be tomorrow night, as he stated the threat during the conference.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said agency intelligence located the second airman, invisible to the enemy but not to the CIA as he put it, and relayed the confirmation through Hegseth to the President before the mission moved to execution. Hegseth said the first daylight mission was authorized in under two hours, that a coordination call ran continuously for 45 hours and 56 minutes, and that the rescued officer’s first transponder message read, in Hegseth’s telling, “God is good”: shot down on Good Friday, hidden through Saturday, and flown out as the sun rose on Easter Sunday. Hegseth said that, per the President’s direction, April 6 would see the largest volume of strikes since day one of the operation and April 7 even more. The Joint Staff chairman added operational detail, noting the isolated-personnel event was declared Thursday, April 2 at 10:10 p.m. Eastern for the F-15E, call sign Dude 44, and said a fuller briefing would follow the next morning.

Why it matters

The rescue is the administration’s defining combat narrative of the Iran war — two aircrew recovered from deep inside Iran at no American loss — and the strike-escalation warnings delivered alongside it mark the coercive backdrop for any negotiation that follows.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Trump’s April 6, 2026 warning that Iran could be taken out in one night and that the night might be the next one, paired with Hegseth’s statement that strike volume would be the operation’s largest on April 6 and larger still on April 7, are dated claims flagged for the scoreboard editors, with no verdict entered here.

Sources: Department of War, “President Donald J. Trump and SecWar Pete Hegseth hold a press conference at the White House”, 2026-04-06 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-04-06). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.