Did the Iranians Set a Trap for American Aircraft Out to Rescue F-15 Pilot?

While the White House announced that the weapons officer in the F-15E fighter shot down on Friday was successfully extracted from Iran, information on the ground and analysts assessment paints a different story as to how the rescue attempt went.

Fox News reports that the rescued pilot sustained serious injuries during the rescue operation with several special forces members involved in the operation also injured.

Other U.S. media reported: CENTCOM sources confirm that not just one, but two aircraft were destroyed inside Iran by U.S. forces, along with two helicopters of the U.S. Army’s 160th SOAR. Some U.S. reports confirm that the aircraft came under MANPADS fire.

The two aircraft were one HC-130J and one MC-130J. The crews of these aircraft and two MH-6M helicopters, along with U.S. Army Special Forces (Delta Force), were evacuated by three other MC-130Js operating inside Iran.

Iranian Ambush?

Analysts said that the Iranians, armed with MANPADs may have shot at the aircraft while descending.

“They rushed headlong into a crude trap: an old, half-abandoned agricultural airstrip. Around this rudimentary runway, Iranian forces had carefully deployed a dense network of MANPADS—those portable surface-to-air missiles that were patiently awaiting their target”, a French defense analyst shared on X.

These details completely undermine the entire American narrative. The claim that U.S. forces blew up C-130 aircraft after they malfunctioned in the sand appears more like a cover-up attempt than a logical military explanation.

It is most likely that these aircraft were targeted and destroyed, which points to the Iranians succeeding in inflicting direct losses on the U.S. force during the rescue operation.

A journalist posted on X

“As an aviation reporter in past I covered multiple air crashes. The propeller blades in attached pic are bent backward exactly in a way they do when spinning at high RPM during a crash impact. That’s textbook dynamic. It is downing damage not blowing up of static aircraft.”

Contrary to the official version that the units were destroyed on the ground, the images of the C-130 wrecks clearly show holes in the fuselage caused either by machine gun or shrapnel fire on the aircraft wreckage

Were there American casualties?

Aside of the Fox News reports of serious injuries to the extracted pilot and injuries to some members of the rescue team, what is not known is if there were any more casualties. A widely shared video shows one of the rescue helicopter shot in the air and crashing behind a hill. How many crew were in the helicopter and what is their fate. If the C-130 aircraft did indeed crash, then what happened to its crew?