Old military footage misrepresented as US airman's recovery in Iran
- Published on April 7, 2026 at 15:55
- 2 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
War-focused accounts on social media are claiming a video shows US special forces rescuing the second airman who was stranded in Iran after an American F-15E fighter jet was shot down April 3, 2026. But this is false; the footage comes from a July 2024 military training exercise in the state of California.
"Straight out of a war movie. Late night, US special forces locate the second pilot and land a transport for extraction but it gets stuck," said an April 5, 2026 post sharing the clip on X. "Operators are forced to hold positions under fire as three more aircraft rush in for a high-risk rescue."
Similar claims spread across X and other platforms such as Facebook, where one widespread post alleged that a still from the footage showed the United States rushing "combat rescue planes to save downed F-15 airman from Iran."
President Donald Trump announced April 5 that US special forces had successfully extracted the weapons system operator who ejected from an aircraft that was downed April 3 in Iran. Trump said the crew member, who evaded capture for two days as both the United States and Iran raced to find him, had been "seriously wounded."
The rescue mission involved more than 170 American aircraft and some 200 troops, Trump said April 6.
US media, citing unnamed officials, reported that American forces had to destroy two transport planes used in the operation to prevent them from falling into Iranian hands after they became stuck, with other aircraft flown in to lift rescue teams to safety.
But the video circulating online is not footage of the operation, as claimed.
Reverse image searches found the same footage published in 2024 on the Pentagon's Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) website, as well as on other official military websites (archived here, here and here).
The DVIDS description says: "U.S. Marines with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 362, Marine Aircraft Group 16, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and U.S. Airmen with the 79th Rescue Squadron conduct forward arming and refueling point operations at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California, July 16, 2024. Marines and Airmen established the FARP to rehearse joint aviation operations in an austere environment."
Clips from DVIDS are regularly misrepresented online, and AFP has previously debunked scenes falsely claimed to show the war in the Middle East here.
Read more fact-checks about the war in Iran here.
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