A Busy, Bad Friday Over the Gulf
On April 3, 2026, the same Friday a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle came down over Iran, the American military lost a second jet near the Strait of Hormuz: an A-10 Thunderbolt II, the attack aircraft crews call the Warthog. U.S. officials, speaking to the New York Times, confirmed the loss and the rescue; by the New York Times’ breaking bulletin, “the lone pilot was safely rescued.”
The next day brought the harder detail. The Aviationist, tracking the incident, reported that the A-10 had been confirmed “struck by hostile fire” while flying in support of the combat search-and-rescue mission for the F-15E crew. The pilot, officials noted, coaxed the damaged single-seat jet into Kuwaiti airspace before ejecting, a decision that made the rescue far simpler than a pickup inside hostile territory would have been.
The Mission the Warthogs Were Flying
The location was no accident. American A-10s had been running regular patrols against Iran’s fleet of small watercraft and drones, the threat that has essentially closed the Strait of Hormuz to almost all shipping. The aircraft’s gun and loiter ability suit the work, and more A-10s were moving into the region via RAF Lakenheath even as the F-22 Raptors that had deployed there earlier headed home toward the United States.
The day’s toll stretched beyond the two fixed-wing losses. A U.S. official said two Black Hawk helicopters took hits from Iranian forces during the rescue operations, though both landed safely in friendly territory, with one crew reported “accounted for and is safe”. Flight trackers also caught an F-16 squawking the 7700 general emergency code near the Saudi-Iraq border around 1500 UTC and a KC-135 tanker doing the same over Israel near 1840 UTC; the causes were unknown, and such squawks range from low fuel to serious trouble.
The Missing Officer
The F-15E’s pilot was recovered by U.S. forces. The weapons systems officer survived ejection and made contact through an encrypted radio, but as of the reporting “remains missing.” The Aviationist’s reading of the silence is skeptical rather than alarmed: if Iran had captured the officer, the propaganda value would make an announcement hard to resist.
All of it happened under Operation Epic Fury, whose tempo has pushed aircraft and crews well past training-hour norms, a strain that makes more mechanical issues and emergency squawks unsurprising. For a strait already closed to commerce, the day’s arithmetic was stark: two jets lost, two helicopters hit, one pilot safe, one still out there.
Sources
Sources
- Updated: A-10 Thunderbolt II Crashed Near the Strait of Hormuz…
- Strait of Hormuz Live Traffic Tracker — Real-Time Shipping & Oil…
