A parachute that wasn't there

Shot down over Iran's high desert in April, the F-15E weapons officer looked up and saw nothing above him. A shoulder-fired missile had wrecked his canopy.

“At one point when I looked up and saw no parachute, that was the most terrifying thing I've ever seen.”

He prayed on the way down

Falling at an estimated 70 to 100 mph, he paused mid-air and made a deal with God. Then he hit the ground and broke his back, an arm and a shoulder.

“Lord, your will be done. But if I'm getting through this, I need help.”

Alpha and Bravo

The two-man crew flew under the call sign Dude 44. The pilot was Alpha. The backseater, identified only as Bravo because of ongoing security threats, is the one who got left behind.

The target near Isfahan

On the night of April 2 the crew was striking industrial sites tied to Iran's drone and missile program, in mountains south of Isfahan near much of its enriched nuclear material.

A $100,000 missile, a $30 million jet

A shoulder-fired weapon took down a plane that has anchored American air combat for decades. Air superiority is not the same as safety.

“We had air superiority, but clearly we weren't flying over Kansas.”

Hit like a freight train

The crew fought to save the jet, realized it was gone, and ejected. Bravo landed roughly five miles from Alpha after wrestling a damaged chute.

“That day was just another day in the war for us, until the moment where we got hit by an Iranian weapon.”

Climbing with broken bones

With cliffs on both sides of the valley, he decided the safest direction was up, and hauled himself to a 7,000-foot ridgeline on a broken back.

“Never let a lack of motivation put you on Iranian TV.”

Washington wakes up

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got the call in the middle of the night and asked two questions: are they alive, and does Iran know. The answer to the second was yes.

“Whether they're alive or not, we're going to go get them.”

Hunted at a few hundred meters

Iranian media posted wreckage, videos showed armed groups sweeping the area, and U.S. sources say searchers came within a few hundred meters of where Bravo was hiding.

“There was clear intent out of the Iranian ground force to come find those two guys.”

Alpha out, Bravo still there

Six hours in, a daylight raid pulled Alpha out under fire. The same force could not find Bravo and had to leave without him.

“It was a gun fight all the way in and all the way out. But they got Alpha back.”

Twenty-four more hours

A second attempt was nearly launched, then scrubbed. Hegseth made the call in the situation room to leave Bravo out there another full day with almost no food or water.

“That was a really tough decision.”

The CIA clears the path

The agency ran a deception campaign to pull Iranian searchers off his trail and used classified technology to fix his exact location. Bombers and drones then hit Revolutionary Guard forces nearby.

First boots in Iran in 46 years

More than 90 service members landed on a makeshift desert strip, with hundreds more in the air and thousands supporting. Little Bird helicopters flew the last few miles to the ridge.

“I think what you need to know is we would have sent more to go get the back-seater.”

Stuck in the sand, then gone

The rescue planes bogged down and could not take off, stranding the team until a clandestine Air Force unit arrived. The U.S. destroyed both aircraft, worth about $100 million each, and the helicopters.

“Let's go.”