It’s already being called an Easter miracle, and when the full story is finally told, it may go down as one of the most extraordinary rescue operations in modern U.S. military history.
For a lot of people, the first comparison that came to mind was Behind Enemy Lines — the 2001 military thriller where Owen Wilson’s character ejects over Bosnia and survives behind hostile territory long enough to be pulled out by American forces.
Over the past few days, that kind of scenario stopped being Hollywood fiction.
This time, it was real.
On Friday, two airmen aboard a downed F-15E Strike Eagle were forced to eject over southwestern Iran.
The pilot was rescued later on Friday, but the other crew member — the weapons systems officer — was left isolated deep in hostile terrain.
What followed was a tense, high-risk effort that stretched across nearly two full days.
According to early reporting, the airman used his SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] training to move away from the wreckag…