Chief National Security Correspondent, Fox News Jennifer Griffin It was revealed that as of Friday afternoon, the American crew member who was still stranded in Iran after the fighter jet was shot down had been missing for about 15 hours.
anchor Trace Gallagher Ask Griffin to give him an update at 3:00 p.m.
“Tress, we have just learned that a crew member was successfully rescued after an F-15E was shot down in the southwestern province of Iran, and during the rescue, enemy fire opened fire. This is the first time we have learned that enemy fire was, in fact, targeting at least one aircraft and even a helicopter involved in the rescue mission. However, it is not correct to say that another aircraft or helicopter was shot down during this rescue mission. It is not accurate,” began Griffin, who continued:
So what we’ve learned since we first started reporting a few hours ago is that the F-15E was flying late Thursday night. It’s dark outside. It was late at night Eastern Time when the plane was shot down. That is, it was still dark in Iran at that time. It was early in the morning, but it was still dark when those pilots had to eject. One of the crew members has been rescued and is currently receiving treatment.
The U.S. military was responsible for the rescue. We saw footage of special operations helicopters Pave Hawk refueling over the area. As far as we know, after the sky went out, they participated in the search and rescue operations for the missing crew members and the rescued crew members.
“Jen, quick, just timeline. So you’re saying this happened Thursday night, U.S. time, which means the missing pilot has been missing for about 12, 14 hours. Is that a fair assessment, Jen?” followed Gallagher.
“I would say longer than that. If our time was late at night, you know, we were coming up, I would say, yeah, maybe 15 hours,” Griffin responded. “But, it’s still early morning in Iran. Iran is seven and a half hours ahead of us (Eastern Standard Time). So it went down in the dark, but we did see footage of the search and rescue during the day as they continued to search for missing crew member Tres.”
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Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin revealed that the stranded American soldier had been missing for 15 hours.
