A U.S. Air Force officer whose F-15E was shot down over Iran has revealed how he prayed while plummeting toward the ground at up to 100 mph before surviving a broken back and other injuries — and 50 hours behind enemy lines as Iranian forces hunted him — in an ordeal he described as a “modern-day miracle.”
The weapons systems officer, identified only by his mission call sign “Dude 44 Bravo” because of Iranian security threats, spoke publicly for the first time Sunday in a 60 Minutes interview that included newly declassified footage of the extraordinary U.S. operation launched to bring him home.
Bravo was flying in the back seat of Dude 44, a two-seat F-15E Strike Eagle, during an April 2 mission to strike industrial facilities tied to Iran’s drone and missile programs south of Isfahan when the $30 million fighter was hit by an Iranian shoulder-fired missile.
“The best way I’ve been able to describe that moment was getting hit by a freight train,” Bravo told CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell.
Bravo and the pilot, call sign Alpha, initially tried to save the badly damaged aircraft before Alpha made the decision to eject them.
“I will be thankful, to my dying day, for my pilot and crewmate, Alpha, for saving our lives and ejecting us,” Bravo said.
But the missile had also damaged Bravo’s parachute.
“At one point when I looked up and saw no parachute, that was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen,” he recalled. “So I paused, right then. And I prayed, ‘Lord, your will be done. But if I’m getting through this, I need help.’”
Bravo effectively free-fell toward the Iranian desert, with experts later estimating from his account and injuries that he struck the ground traveling somewhere between 70 and 100 mph.
The impact broke his back, arm and shoulder. He also suffered a sprained ankle and cuts to his head and face.
Asked how he survived, Bravo answered: “A modern-day miracle.”
“I believe that it’s a testament to God’s provision in my life to bring me through that moment in a way that didn’t prevent injuries, but prevented any catastrophic injuries that would have affected my ability to survive,” he said.
Bravo had landed roughly five miles from Alpha in rugged high-desert terrain and immediately began moving away from his landing site as Iranian forces mobilized to capture the downed Americans.
Iranian media publicized the wreckage, rewards were offered for the airmen’s capture, and armed groups were seen searching for them. U.S. military sources told 60 Minutes that Iranian forces eventually came within several hundred meters of Bravo.
“There was clear intent out of the Iranian ground force to come find those two guys,” Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said.
U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper said American forces were tracking roughly 1,500 Iranian personnel within a ten-mile radius.
Badly injured and surrounded by steep cliffs, Bravo concluded his best chance was to go up. Despite his broken bones, he climbed toward a ridgeline roughly 7,000 feet in elevation to conceal himself and evade the search.
Asked how he found the strength, Bravo offered a blunt answer.
“Never let a lack of motivation put you on Iranian TV.”
The United States meanwhile launched a massive effort to recover both men. War Secretary Pete Hegseth said that when he was awakened with news that the F-15E had gone down, his attention immediately turned to whether the airmen were alive and whether Iran knew where they were.
“Whether they’re alive or not, we’re gonna go get ’em,” Hegseth said.
Alpha was located first and recovered roughly six hours after the shootdown in a daring daylight raid that came under intense Iranian fire.
“It was a gun fight all the way in and all the way out,” Hegseth said. “But they got Alpha back.”
Bravo remained missing.
As darkness fell, he finally established communications from a concealed position, telling U.S. forces he was injured but moving and sending another three-word message: “God is good.”
“When I got to the moment where I could review and think about all that I’d gone through, I sent, ‘God is good,’ as a recognition of all that he had brought me through,” Bravo said.
An effort to retrieve him that night was considered but ultimately delayed, leaving the wounded airman to endure another full day in the cold mountain desert with almost no water and no food.
As Breitbart News reported at the time, the CIA played a pivotal role in the hunt for Bravo, using classified capabilities to help pinpoint his location while mounting a deception campaign intended to divert Iranian search teams away from where he was hiding.
The newly declassified footage aired Sunday shows U.S. bombers and drones striking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces near Bravo’s position to clear the way for his extraction.
The scale of what followed was extraordinary.
Cooper said approximately 92 U.S. personnel entered Iran for the second rescue operation — the first American boots on Iranian soil in 46 years — while several hundred personnel operated in the air and an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 supported the mission overall.
Asked about sending nearly 100 Americans onto Iranian soil to rescue a single airman, Caine made clear the size of the force was never the limiting consideration.
“I think what you need to know is we would have sent more to go get the back-seater,” he said.
Two large search-and-rescue aircraft landed at a makeshift desert airstrip, from which smaller Little Bird helicopters launched toward Bravo’s mountain position.
Declassified footage shows two Air Force pararescue operators, known as PJs, reaching the wounded officer on the ridgeline.
“The moment a PJ showed up to me on that ridgeline was one of the greatest moments of my life,” Bravo said.
Asked what he told his rescuers, Bravo recalled two words: “Let’s go.”
But getting Bravo into American hands did not end the operation. The landing gear of the rescue aircraft became stuck in the desert sand, suddenly leaving more than 90 of America’s most elite service members stranded inside Iran.
A clandestine Air Force unit was ultimately brought in to evacuate Bravo and the rescue force. The United States then destroyed the marooned aircraft and equipment left behind to prevent the technology from falling into Iranian hands.
Fifty hours after Dude 44 was shot down, Bravo finally reached safety as the sun rose on Easter Sunday.
The rescue was first detailed extensively by Breitbart News in April, when President Donald Trump hailed it as an “Easter miracle” and vowed that the United States would “never leave an American warfighter behind.”
Bravo, now telling the story in his own words for the first time, said he never doubted that Americans were coming for him.
“It’s what we do,” he said. “I have great faith in my creator. And second only to that is my faith in the men and women of the United States military.”
And asked what he wanted Americans to take from the operation, Bravo turned the focus away from himself.
“This is not a story about what I went through,” he said. “Instead, it’s a story of the teamwork, the training, of the faith, of the decisions and the leadership to do something that will live in history as an example of what America’s willing to do, in order to uphold our promise and leave no man behind.”
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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