When an American military UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was struck during a search-and-rescue mission over Iranian-Iraqi overlapping airspace, it served as an instant recall of a popular-culture reference, spanning a 1999 book, a 2001 blockbuster movie, and that night when Osama Bin Laden was killed in 2011.
The chopper was in action for a search-and-rescue operation after a US F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet was shot down over Iran. Social media footage, geolocated by CNN to Khuzestan province in south-western Iran, appeared to show a C-130 transport aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters flying low as part of that rescue effort.
The UH-60 Black Hawk is built by Sikorsky, a subsidiary of the American defence company Lockheed Martin. It is named after the Native American war chief Makataimeshekiakiak, also known as Black Hawk, who was a leader of the Sauk tribe in what is now the state of Illinois.
The phrase 'Black Hawk down' entered pop culture in one such moment of enemy fire. On October 3, 1993, when the helicopter was carrying out a raid in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, it was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.
The Black Hawk's next defining moment came on May 2, 2011, when US Navy SEALs killed Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The downed F-15E on Friday would be the fourth US plane lost in Operation Epic Fury, the military campaign against Iran, but the first acknowledged to have been shot down by the Iranians.
