The American pilot whose F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran during Operation Epic Fury had already survived being aboard one of the two F-15Es mistakenly downed by Kuwaiti air defenses earlier in the conflict, two people familiar with both incidents told CBS News.

The pilot, whose name has not been publicly released, was one of two crew members rescued in what President Trump called “the most historic rescue operation” in American history after their jet was brought down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile during a strike mission deep inside Iranian territory. Both the pilot and his weapons systems officer were successfully recovered — though the WSO spent 36 hours stranded in mountainous terrain before U.S. forces reached him.

The disclosure that the same pilot had also been aboard one of the jets destroyed in the Kuwaiti friendly fire incident makes him one of the most singular figures of the war — an aviator who survived two shoot-downs in the same conflict, at the hands of two different forces.

The friendly fire incident, which occurred in the early weeks of Operation Epic Fury, involved two F-15E Strike Eagles mistakenly engaged by Kuwaiti air defense systems. Both crews survived. The incident was a significant early blow to coalition coordination and added to pressure on the Gulf states, which had allowed U.S. forces to operate from their territory but were navigating intense domestic and regional pressure given the Shiite populations within their borders.

The Congressional Research Service documented that four F-15E Strike Eagles were among the 34 aircraft destroyed over the course of the conflict, making it the costliest aerial attrition the U.S. military has sustained in any campaign in decades.

The Iran shoot-down triggered an extraordinary 48-hour rescue operation involving both U.S. and Israeli forces. According to prior reporting, the IDF launched a series of diversionary strikes against Iranian targets designed to draw security forces away from the crash site, while the CIA spread disinformation inside Iran suggesting the missing WSO had already been found and was being moved overland, confusing Iranian search teams long enough for American forces to extract him.

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