'Completely unbelievable': US pilots say 'traumatized' by intensity of Yemen retaliatory operations

US Navy fighter pilots have described as "traumatizing" their encounters with Yemen's Armed Forces launching daring strikes on Israeli-owned and-bound shipping in the Red Sea in retaliation for the occupying regime's months-long genocide against Palestinians in the beseiged Gaza Strip.

The fighter pilots came home in Virginia on Friday after nine months of maritime clashes with the Yemeni military and their missile and drone strikes, in what CBS News described as "the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II."

The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group, which includes three other warships supported by squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets, was tasked with protecting Israeli vessels and US-allied warships in a Red Sea corridor that leads to the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean.

The carrier strike group left Virginia in mid-October last year but its deployment at the strategic waterway was extended twice following the escalation of Yemen's pro-Palestine retaliatory attacks.

"Honestly, it was completely unbelievable," Lt. Cmdr. Charity Somma told CBS News. "I don't think anybody on board that carrier strike group was expecting that to happen."

Commander Benjamin Orloff, a Navy pilot, told reporters in Virginia Beach that most of the sailors, including him, were not used to being fired on, given their previous military engagements in recent decades.

"It was incredibly different," Orloff said. "And I'll be honest, it was a little traumatizing for the group. It's something that we don't think about a lot until you're presented with it."

. . . Underlining the severity of the Yemeni military's confrontation with the US Navy forces, Orloff said, "This is not long-range projection. This was...right in our faces."

. . . Yemeni Armed Forces have said that they will not stop their attacks until Israeli ground and aerial offensives in Gaza, which have killed at least 38,345 people, and wounded another 88, 295 individuals, comes to an end.

. . . The leader of Yemen's Ansarullah resistance movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has said that it is "a great honor and blessing to be confronting America directly."

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/07/13/729229/US-Navy-fighter-pilots-traumatizing-Yemen-Armed-Forces-Red-Sea

[color="Blue"]What's the matter, girls? Upset because someone is actually shooting back at you with weapons that can inflict serious hurt on you? Been watching Top Gun too many times?