Does a viral image actually show a U.S. Army helicopter that crashed in Iran on April 3, 2026? No, that's not true: The picture was online more than a year earlier. It was published in Honduras in March 2025.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here and here) published by the @TheLaikYobaz account on X on April 3, 2026. The Turkish caption read:
İran tarafından düşürülen ABD uçağından düşen pilotları kurtarmak için arama uçuşu yapan bir Black Hawk helikopterinin düşürüldüğü belirtiliyor. Böyle giderse ABD filosunda uçak ve helikopter kalmayacak.
As translated to English by the X automatic translation tool, it meant:
A Black Hawk helicopter that was on a search flight to rescue the pilots who crashed from a US plane shot down by Iran has reportedly been shot down. If this continues, the US fleet will be left with no planes or helicopters.
The post included a 16-second video file that consisted of a single image. This is what it looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @thelaikyobaz on X.)
The claim that the image showed a crash site in Iran appeared online shortly after the news (archived here) came out that a U.S. Army fighter jet over that country was downed on April 3, 2026.
However, the picture far predated the 2026 escalation.
Google's "About this image" tab said it was "at least 1 year old" at the time of this writing:
(Image source: Google.)
According to the summary on the Aviation Safety Network website (archived here), the photo showed a March 5, 2025, incident in Honduras (archived here):
A US Army UH-60L belonging to the 1-228th Aviation Regiment has suffered damages upon executing an emergency landing near Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras, where the unit is based out of.
On March 6, 2025, Mexican news outlet El Imparcial published a video (archived here) from Honduras firefighters on its Facebook page. As automatically translated to English by Chrome, the caption, in part, read:
A U.S. military UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter from Joint Task Force Bravo (JTFB) made an emergency landing near Soto Cano Air Base on March 5, said Laura F. Dogu, U.S. ambassador to Honduras.
