Khaberni - A former American pilot recounts his experience in captivity after his fighter jet was shot down in Iraq 23 years ago, highlighting the conditions that the missing American pilot in Iran might face.
The United States announced last Friday the crash of an American fighter jet in Iran and a search and rescue operation to find any survivors, which has so far resulted in the rescue of one of the crew members who jumped from it, in the first known incident of its kind since the United States waged war on Iran on February 28.
The New York Times conducted an interview with the former pilot Ronald Young Jr., who recalled the memories of his helicopter, an Apache Longbow, crashing during the American invasion of Iraq.
The newspaper mentioned that when the helicopter crashed in central Iraq during the early days of the American invasion in 2003. Ronald Young Jr., the pilot who was then 26 years old, jumped from the helicopter and rushed to take cover, remembering that under the light of the full moon, he suddenly felt like prey.
Young said in the interview: "Nothing compares to the situation where you are under fire. You can't even comprehend what's happening to you. People are chasing you. They are trying to kill you. And then you realize that all you want is to survive."
Young was a senior non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army when his Apache Longbow helicopter went down that year.
Amid the ongoing war, the fate of one of the crew members of an F-15 fighter jet remains unknown after being shot down over Iran on Friday, while U.S. officials announced the rescue of one of the pilots.
The U.S. military has started a search and rescue operation to find the second crew member. Conversely, Tehran has begun its efforts to find the missing American and capture him.
The newspaper says that stories of American pilots who survived after crashing their aircraft in hostile areas during previous military operations offer a glimpse into the psychology of survival, starting from the first hours of escaping pursuit to the endurance needed to survive captivity.
Capture Details
In Iraq, Young and his co-pilot, David Williams, stayed on the ground for about an hour and a half, noting that they ran through long grasses and hid in an irrigation canal, fearing hypothermia, before falling into the hands of militants and remaining prisoners of war for 23 days.
Young told the newspaper that on the first night, he and his co-pilot were beaten and interrogated in dark rooms in the city of Karbala in central Iraq, while bombs destroyed targets around them. They were later transported by truck to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, where they were placed under the control of military officials, as he said.
During their capture, they were transferred from one prison to another until Baghdad fell to the American forces, and they were handed over to other prisons in the city of Samarra.
He mentioned that eventually, he managed to survive along with his co-pilot and leave Iraq in 2003 after an agreement between the U.S. government and their captors.
Military pilots receive training in principles known as survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. After jumping from the aircraft, pilots must find a safe location to avoid being captured by enemy fighters and use the radios in their gear to exchange locations with American forces.
In cases of capture or detention as hostages, pilots are supposed to rely on resistance training to deal with the intense psychological stress and possible interrogation and torture during captivity.
But practically, as Young said, what happens after the aircraft is shot down is an existential struggle between instinct and consciousness.
He added: "Adrenaline levels rise to record heights. However, the ability to think clearly comes astonishingly. You then realize that you have a tremendous amount of knowledge. Your reactions become very automatic. You find yourself almost in an automatic operation where you start to execute what you need to do automatically."
