Did an Iranian missile really down an American B-52 bomber? That’s the claim being made by social media users sharing a video that appears to show a missile tailing and then striking a B-52 bomber in mid-air.
One July 19 X post by the pro-Iranian account Iran Army Media has garnered more than three million views since it was shared with the caption “watch Iranian missiles chase down America’s finest war planes”.
No coverage by credible media outlets
When we searched the keywords "B-52", "shot down" and “Iranian missile” online, we didn’t find a single article in a credible media source about the recent loss of a US B-52 bomber.
Moreover, several things visible in the video point to it being artificially generated.
Visual clues that the video was artificially generated
The flames and the smoke seem strangely frozen on the plane’s fuselage, seemingly unmoved by the wind or the fact that the plane is moving. This is a common issue with computer-generated effects that can help differentiate it from footage of a real fire.
It is also strange that the plane breaks into neat pieces after it is hit. Once again, this is much more akin to the special effects seen in video games than what it looks like when a plane is hit in reality.
The movement of the camera is abnormally fluid and stable for a fast-moving object filmed from a distance. And the lighting and the texture of the plane aren’t realistic. Reflections or atmospheric effects, usually visible when something is filmed from an aerial view, are not visible.
The fact-checking outlet Lead Stories reported that this video was likely taken from a military flight simulator or a video game, such as DCS World or War Thunder. For the time being, neither Lead Stories nor social media users have been able to find the exact excerpt from a video game or a simulator that this sequence may have been taken from.
This wouldn’t be the first time that a video game sequence has been taken out of context since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran.
Last March, a number of images said to show strikes on the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier circulated widely on social media before it was discovered that they were false and that most of them were excerpts from a video game.
This article has been translated from the original in French by Brenna Daldorph.
