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 besieged 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 referred to 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