Six crew members died when a U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker crashed Thursday in western Iraq during operations supporting the U.S. military campaign against Iran, CENTCOM confirmed early Friday.
“At approximately 2 p.m. ET on March 12, a U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft went down in western Iraq,” CENTCOM said in a statement released early the next day. Four of six crew members on board the aircraft have been confirmed deceased as of this statement, with rescue efforts ongoing. The two other members were later confirmed dead. The circumstances of the incident are under investigation. However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to hostile fire or friendly fire.”
As of March 13, the names of the four killed were being withheld pending notification of their families. The crash, first reported as a developing incident by The New York Times on March 12 and updated on March 13, 2026, brought the total number of American service members killed in operations related to the Iran conflict to at least 11.
Further details from CENTCOM revealed Thursday that two aircraft were involved in the incident, which took place in “friendly airspace” during Operation Epic Fury—the Pentagon’s name for the ongoing U.S.-led military campaign against Iran that began on February 28. Of the two aircraft, one went down and the second landed safely.
U.S. officials told CBS News that investigators believe the incident may have involved a midair collision between the two planes, though a formal determination had not been made and the inquiry remained active. Flight tracking data reviewed by multiple outlets showed that a second KC-135 declared a flight emergency — transmitting the international distress code known as “squawk 7700” — before landing at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv Thursday evening. Images circulating on social media, reported by The War Zone but not independently verified, appeared to show the aircraft missing a substantial portion of its vertical stabilizer.
Local reports provided further context: an Iraqi intelligence source told CBS News that the downed aircraft fell near Turaibil, in the remote desert terrain along the Iraqi-Jordanian border. Western Iraq is largely uninhabited desert—a geographic reality that complicates search and rescue operations.
Given the KC-135’s design, which lacks ejection seats, the six crew members had no means of abandoning the aircraft in flight.
An Aging Workhorse of American Air Power
The KC-135 Stratotanker is among the oldest airframes still in active service in the U.S. Air Force. The last aircraft in the fleet was delivered in 1965, during the Johnson administration — nearly three decades after the program began under President Eisenhower. Despite its age, the Air Force expects the Stratotanker to remain operational until 2050 or beyond, a testament to its structural durability and the slow pace of its replacement, the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus, being fielded.
The plane serves as what Breaking Defense called “the backbone of the United States’ air refueling fleet” — a flying gas station that extends the range of fighter jets, surveillance platforms, and cargo aircraft by allowing them to refuel without landing. In a conflict like Operation Epic Fury, where American aircraft must cover vast distances across the Middle East from bases in the region and beyond, tankers are an indispensable part of every strike package.
Aerial refueling is a demanding maneuver under any conditions. A boom operator extends a rigid fuel transfer arm from the rear of the tanker toward the receiving aircraft, which must hold a precise position during the procedure. High winds, poor visibility, or mechanical failure can turn a routine operation into a catastrophe. Air Force officials said investigators suspected a midair collision may have occurred, though precise details remained unclear as of Friday morning.
The last time a KC-135 crashed during a combat support mission was on May 3, 2013, when one came down over northern Kyrgyzstan shortly after departing Manas Air Base, during support for Afghanistan operations. Three airmen died in that incident. Thursday, March 12, marks the first loss of a KC-135 in a combat theater in more than twelve years.
The Fourth Aircraft Lost in Operation Epic Fury
The Stratotanker’s March 12 loss is the fourth manned U.S. aircraft to go down since Operation Epic Fury began on February 28. However, it is the first attributed to a non-combat cause. The three previous losses were F-15E Strike Eagle fighters shot down in early March in a friendly fire incident involving Kuwaiti F/A-18 aircraft; all pilots in those jets ejected safely.
Since the opening strikes of the Iran conflict, the toll on American forces has risen. Six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers were killed on March 1 in an Iranian strike on Kuwait’s Shuaiba port. A seventh service member died after sustaining injuries in an attack in Saudi Arabia earlier this month. With the fatalities on March 12, at least 11 Americans have now been killed in connection with the conflict, and as of March 13, CENTCOM has reported that another 140 service members have been wounded, eight of them severely.
Adding to the confusion, Iran’s Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an umbrella organization of pro-Iranian militia factions—claimed responsibility for downing the aircraft, saying it struck the KC-135 “with the appropriate weapon” and forced a second to make an emergency landing. However, CENTCOM directly contradicted that claim, stating the crash was not caused by hostile fire.
As the investigation into the crash continues, two crew members remain unaccounted for in the desert of western Iraq, underscoring the ongoing search efforts.
