Online users falsely claimed a months-old video showed one of the two pilots of a downed U.S. Air Force fighter jet being captured in April 2026.

Iranian media has released a video showing an American black hawk helicopter searching for the fighter jet pilot captured by Tehran. Iranian forces reportedly thwarted US's attempt to rescue the pilot.

The news agency further claimed that Iranian armed forces had foiled a US attempt to rescue the pilot of a fighter jet shot down over Iranian territory. Iranian government sources also confirmed that the pilot is captured.

A US fighter jet was downed over Iran on Friday. This is the first known loss of a US jet inside the country since the war began on February 28. According to The New York Times and Wall Street Journal,

Following the downing of the F-15E, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) cordoned off some parts of the mountainous southwestern Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province because they believed the airman went down in the vicinity.

Iranian authorities search for US fighter pilot after jet downed, bounty offered, as US media confirms crew missing.

Confusion continues to surround the fate of a US fighter pilot after Iran claimed it had shot down a second American jet, with conflicting reports suggesting he may have been killed or captured. Iranian state-run and semi-official media outlets,

When US aircraft goes down in a war zone, the response is anything but ad hoc — it’s a tightly choreographed, high-stakes operation to get the pilots back to safety, keep sensitive technology out of enemy hands and deny adversaries both intelligence and propaganda wins.

BLOODTHIRSTY Iranian broadcasters have offered a “precious prize” for the capture of a missing American pilot – as a frantic rescue mission for the airman continues. A US F-15