The night between April 13-14, 2024 is one no Israeli will forget. Neither will the American Air Force and Navy pilots who helped defend the Jewish state against the largest drone and missile assault in history.
On that night, Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen launched 170 suicide drones, 30 cruise missiles, and over 120 ballistic missiles at the State of Israel.
No more than nine found their target, causing only minor damage and no deaths.
The defense, codenamed “Iron Shield,” was a resounding success thanks to the courageous efforts of Israel’s aerial defense units and US pilots who spent hours in the air over the Middle East shooting down every projectile they could.
On the one-year anniversary of that battle, the American military published interviews with some of the pilots.
“The radar just lit up,” one pilot described the first moments of the attack. “At that point, we were in an hour-long fight, just trying to destroy whatever we could.”
Another pilot explained, “I received the green light to take off, just another night mission like all the others.”
A third pilot added, “We were out there for a couple of hours with no clear understanding of what was happening, and we thought maybe it was already over.”
One year ago today, Iran launched 300 missiles and drones at Israel. Our aviators risked everything to stop it. These heroes will never know how many innocent lives they saved that night. Hear the story from those who lived it. Damn proud of these patriots! pic.twitter.com/ekiXHhRmAS
— General David Allvin (@OfficialCSAF) April 13, 2025
“Boards got the first lock, did exactly what he was taught and fired within about 20 seconds,” one pilot recounted about his colleague. The young pilot described his own experience, “I’m going to do this, I’ll be the first one in my formation, and I’m by far the least experienced. I gave someone an opportunity to tell me not to do it. … Nobody answered, so I said, ‘Alright.’”
“The radar identifies another one, and another one. All attacking drones,” another pilot described the battle.
One of the pilots portrayed the scene: “The ground was burning. You could see each of the drones that was hit.”
Squadron commander Lt. Col. Kevin Murphy said, “It took about 45 minutes to fire all the missiles we had before we had to return after running out of ammunition.”
“Three hundred [Iranian] weapons were fired at a target. Only six of them hit. Nobody died. That’s defending our allies. We got to be part of something meaningful and impactful,” another pilot reflected at the end of the video.
Israeli, American, Jordanian, British and French fighter jets participated in intercepting the missiles and drones. American aircraft destroyed more than 80 Iranian munitions, with more than half of them threatening Israel. Israeli systems, primarily the Arrow and David’s Sling systems, intercepted about 90% of the ballistic missiles.
In total, approximately 99% of the threats launched at Israel were intercepted, an unprecedented achievement in the history of aerial warfare.
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