The mystery of the missing aircrew

A new conspiracy comes to town

There’s a new conspiracy theory in town. I’m seeing lots of claims on the internet that the recent massive rescue mission that allegedly extracted two downed Air Force F-15 crewmen was a massive hoax, along with speculation about what was really going on.

For those who might be living under a rock, a USAF F-15 fighter-bomber, call sign Dude 44, was shot down over Iran on April 3, Good Friday. The pilot was rescued quickly, but the Weapons Systems Officer, the WSO or GIB (Guy In Back), was the subject of an intense search and rescue effort that culminated in his retrieval during the early morning hours of Easter Sunday.

Photo: F-15E Strike Eagle (AF.mil)

Where the conspiracy theories come in is that in the weeks following the rescue, little, if any, additional information has come out about the status of the crew, their identities, or their condition. Given the need for good PR regarding the unpopular and seemingly unsuccessful war in Iran, it seems likely that the Department of Defense (which is still the real name of the agency) would like to treat both the rescued and the rescuers as heroes and parade them around in public. That has not happened. The only positive information about the identities of the crew was a remark by Donald Trump that the rescued WSO was “a highly respected Colonel.”

As is often the case, the lack of information has created a vacuum that is being filled by conspiracy theories. That includes speculation that the crew was captured, fed by bad information such as a 1990 video from the Gulf War reposted to Facebook, or that the operation was a cover story for a raid into Iran with a different purpose. Some deny that the raid occurred at all.

First, I think we can reasonably be sure there was a rescue mission. The F-15 represents one of only two airborne losses to Iranian fire from the war so far. The other was an A-10 that was heavily damaged about the same time. That pilot was rescued after flying out of Iran and ditching in or near the Strait of Hormuz. Essentially, the Air Force wouldn’t have a reason to lie about the F-15 shootdown and give the Iranians credit for a kill that they didn’t earn.

We can also know that Iran did not capture or kill the crew. If live prisoners or dead bodies were in Iranian hands, the images would be widely broadcast by Iranian media. They have not been.

Further, the US has historically made immense efforts to rescue downed aircrew where possible. Going back to Vietnam and beyond, downed pilots and crewmen would be the subject of large rescue efforts that included helicopters, attack aircraft, and sometimes fighters, bombers, tankers, and even ground forces. Rescue efforts were important for aircrew morale as well as to deny the enemy a source of propaganda. Additionally, it takes years to train crewmen so there is a logistical reason as well.

So why the cover-up? I’m venturing into speculation, but there are a few possibilities.

The most obvious answer is that to protect the crew’s privacy. Maybe, like many soldiers who do heroic things, they didn’t want the notoriety. Along the same lines, it would not be unreasonable to fear that they or their families could be targeted by Iranian terror cells back home. Maybe their injuries were significant enough that they are still hospitalized.

Or maybe there is some reason that releasing the crew’s identities would be embarrassing. The possibilities here run the gamut from crew members being involved in Never Trump politics to being gay to being members of a minority related to military DEI policies. Again, this is all speculative, but in the past, the military has been known to cover up operational screwups that reflected poorly on the service. The 2004 friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman, an NFL player who walked away from the Arizona Cardinals to fight in Afghanistan after September 11, was one such case.

With a notoriously secretive and closed Administration, it’s difficult to say what might be embarrassing enough to justify a coverup. If there is a move to cover up something embarrassing, it may be related to why two MC-130 transports had to be destroyed after one reportedly got stuck in the sand at the hastily established forward runway inside enemy territory or why the F-15 was shot down in the first place.

A more likely explanation, however, is that the coverup is related to military secrets. We don’t know the precise mission that the F-15 was on or what its target was, but there is speculation that it was related to Iran’s nuclear program. It might be that revealing the crew’s identity would provide information to the Iranians about their mission.

Releasing information about the mission might also endanger Iranians on the ground. Dissidents who opposed the regime reportedly assisted the Special Operations troops responsible for rescuing the crew. Publicity might place those Iranians in danger.

Publicity might also give away the secret technology used to locate the WSO. The crewman was reportedly located using a secret CIA tool called “Ghost Murmur” that can detect heartbeats at extreme distances. But Ghost Murmur may just be a cover story or a red herring. Experts in the field say that the technology, as described, may be scientifically impossible. That leaves the question of how the colonel was really found.

Finally, with respect to the theories that the operation was a cover for some sort of raid, perhaps targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, I think that would look very different from the operation that the world saw. Attack aircraft and troop carriers would converge on the target, rather than using different types of aircraft to search over a wide area while suppressing Iranian forces that were moving in.

Iranian media posted pictures of the downed American plane (although it was initially misidentified) so we know without a doubt that an F-15 was really lost. The Iranians themselves seem convinced that the shoot-down and rescue effort were real, even offering a bounty for the stranded aircrew.

Logically, if we lost a plane in Iran, then we also lost a crew. If the Iranians didn’t capture the crew, then the US must have retrieved them.

At this point, there is simply no way to know the full truth about what happened Easter weekend deep Iran, but there is little reason to suspect that the entire incident was a hoax. The most likely explanation for the inconsistencies and unanswered questions are that they relate to military secrets. There is almost certainly a coverup of some sort going on, but it’s likely related to garden variety classified programs rather than a sinister hoax perpetrated for unknown reasons.

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