President Trump on Monday revealed the miraculous and harrowing 36 hours that a US colonel spent behind enemy lines in Iran — “injured quite badly” and “bleeding rather profusely” before he was rescued.
“In the United States military, we leave no American behind. We don’t do it,” Trump told reporters at a White House briefing, sharing new details about the daring mission to bring back the weapons system officer from the “treacherous mountain terrain.”
The shot-down airman scaled a cliff while bleeding profusely and then treated his own wounds while hiding nearly two days in an area “teeming with terrorists,’’ Trump said.
He said the rescuers demonstrated “a breath-taking show of skill” in successfully retrieving the airman known by the nickname “Dude Bravo 44.”
“The heroic F-15 weapons system officer had evaded capture on the ground in Iran for almost 48 hours. That’s a long time when you’re in tough shape and when you’re bleeding,” Trump said.
He landed a “significant distance” away from the pilot of the F-15E, shot down south of Isfahan Thursday night.
The weapons system officer was successfully extracted from the southwest of Iran on Sunday in “one of the largest, most complex, most harrowing combat searches … ever attempted by the military,” the president said.
In total, 155 military aircraft including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers and 13 rescue aircraft were deployed for the mission, Trump said
“A lot of it was subterfuge,” the president explained. “We wanted them to think he was in another location.”
Many of the aircraft involved in the amazing rescue had to fly low, leaving them in the potentially deadly line of heavy fire, Trump said.
“We got a helicopter in it with a lot of bullets,’’ he said.
Trump described how military planes landed in an agricultural field and assembled three small helicopters to rescue the injured pilot without a single fatality.
He described how the “wet sandy” terrain in Iran further complicated the mission.
Before it happened, “I would have said that was impossible,’’ Trump said.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added, “The single most important contributor to a successful rescue operation is the spirit of attack inside the heart of that downed aviator.
“Their will to survive, their will to evade, their will to recover, is everything. In this case, the back seater’s absolute commitment to surviving made much of our efforts possible,” he said.
“Lastly, and most importantly, to Dude Bravo 4-4, welcome home. Job well done,’’ Gen. Caine finished by saying.
President Trump said the rescuers demonstrated “a breath-taking show of skill.”
The “highly respected” colonel landed away from the F-15E’s pilot, “was injured quite badly and stranded in an area teeming with terrorists from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the president continued.
Iran used sniffer dogs to try to track down the downed airman, but they were ineffective at tracking him down, according to US military sources.
“They were given a tremendous incentive to find this pilot,” Trump added. “Despite the peril, the officer followed his training and climbed into the treacherous mountain terrain and started climbing toward a higher altitude, something they were trained to do in order to evade capture.”
“You want to go as far away because they all head right to that site. You want to be as far away as you can,” he also said, noting that the crew member was “bleeding rather profusely” from his injuries and had to treat his own wounds before being able to contact “American forces to transmit his location.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe said his agency participated in the “deception campaign” to help rescue the airman.
He said the CIA helped “confuse the Iranians who were desperately hunting for our airman’’ and also “deployed both human assets and exquisite technologies” to find the crew member, likening the search “to hunting for a single same grain of sand in the middle of a desert.
“Our intelligence reflects that the Iranians were embarrassed and ultimately humiliated by the success of this audacious rescue mission,” Ratcliffe added.
Trump said some military leaders opposed the weekend rescue of a downed US pilot — fearing hundreds of American troop deaths.
“Not everybody was on board,” Trump said, specifying that Gen. Dan Caine and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who appeared alongside him, “were totally on-board.
“There were military people that said, ‘You just don’t do this, you don’t go into the heart of a very powerful military,’” the president said. “There were people within the military that said it’s unwise.”
What to know about the daring rescue of the US airman in Iran:
Trump asked Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to share how many US troops were involved in the rescue, with the general demurring, “I would love to keep that a secret.”
“It was hundreds,” the president added. “Hundreds of people could have been killed, so we had people within the military that said this was not a wise [idea].”
Iran was “embarrassed and humiliated” by the daring rescue, Hegseth said.
“Ultimately, it was an impotent Iranian threat,” he said of the country’s warnings against the US. “And today, as the CIA director mentioned, Iran’s military, and we know this, is embarrassed and humiliated, and they should be.”
The cabinet official noted that the colonel was saved over Easter weekend.
“When he was finally able to activate his emergency transponder, his first message was simple and it was powerful. He sent a message, ‘God is good,’ ” Hegseth recounted.
“In that moment of isolation and danger, his faith and fighting spirit shone through,” he said. “Shot down on a Friday — Good Friday — hidden in a cave, a crevice all of Saturday, and rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn.”
