US Navy rescues crew of Apache helicopter off coast of Oman
The cause of the Apache gunship crash is under investigation as the US military has quietly coached commercial ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz despite Iran’s threats.
WASHINGTON — The US Navy rescued two Apache helicopter crew members off Oman’s coast on Monday, the Pentagon’s Middle East command headquarters confirmed Tuesday.
US Navy teams rescued the two crew members after a search assisted by US Air Force assets and elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, US Central Command said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the AH-64 Apache gunship to crash. There was no initial report of hostile fire, one official said. A second official said the incident, which is now under investigation, could have been a mechanical failure.
A remotely-piloted US military unmanned surface boat picked up the two crew members, marking a first for US CENTCOM’s Task Force 59, which has led the Pentagon’s experimentation with unmanned drones at sea, according to CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins.
“The drone picked them up and transported them to another location on the water where they were then hoisted up to a helicopter for further transport,” Hawkins told Al-Monitor. The US military began fielding Corsair sea drones in the Middle East in March, he said.
The incident came just a day after Iran and Israel briefly resumed fighting with mutual strikes on Sunday despite public admonishment from the Trump White House, which is seeking a negotiated end to the war with Tehran.
US naval and air assets have been remotely advising the crews of commercial tanker and cargo vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf due to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
Prior to the Apache crash on Monday, an F/A-18 Super Hornet launched from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln fired a missile into the “engineering and steering spaces” of a commercial tanker, the M/T Marivex, in the Gulf of Oman after its crew attempted to run the US blockade of Iran’s ports, CENTCOM said.
It is not yet clear whether there was any connection between the Apache crash and the US airstrike on the Marivex, which US officials targeted with economic sanctions in 2024 over its links to Iran’s oil exports abroad. The crash of the AH-64 Apache occurred after the US airstrike on the tanker, one official said.
The Marivex was the seventh commercial vessel disabled by the US military in the Gulf region since the US initiated its blockade of Iran’s ports on April 13. Iran has recently attempted to retaliate for such strikes by launching drones into the Strait of Hormuz, leading to additional US airstrikes on Iranian soil despite Pentagon officials saying the ceasefire remains in place.
Iran has shot down at least 24 and as many as 30 US MQ-9 drones during the war, roughly a fifth of the Pentagon’s fleet.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump told reporters that the two Apache crew members were safe and that the cause of the crash will be reported soon.
Last month, Trump threatened to bomb Oman, a US-aligned Gulf state and erstwhile mediator in the conflict with Iran, if its government collaborates with Iran's stated plans to impose tolls on ships transiting Hormuz.
