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Between 1949 and 1991 hundreds of incidents occurred where armed Soviet/Russian aircraft confronted or were confronted by armed American military aircraft and combat threatened. In most of these incidents radar locks (threatening a missile launch) and aggressive flight resulted in one side breaking off and retreating for home. Sometimes actual combat ensued. Twenty US Aircraft were downed by the Soviets during the Cold War. There became almost regularly scheduled interception missions. During height of Cold War, a pair of Soviet Tu-95 Bears would fly from the Kola Peninsula to Cuba down the east coast of the United States while being escorted continuously along the way by armed US fighters. Information on these missions, shrouded in secrecy over the decades, began to be declassified in the mid to late 1990s.
The bloodiest period started in 1950 when Soviet fighters shot down a US Navy patrol craft over the Baltic Sea off of what is now Latvia. From then until 1962 the blood flowed as American aircraft penetrated Russian airspace and paid the price. In a twelve year period 19 more US planes, mainly reconnaissance aircraft, were destroyed in one sided fights with Russian MiGs. In most instances it was claimed officially by the United States government that the downed plane had been on a routine weather reconnaissance flight, navigational training flight, electromagnetic research flight or atmospheric testing flight when it was attacked by Soviet fighters and shot down over international waters. The Russian position was generally that the aircraft had either penetrated Soviet airspace or actually over flew Soviet land and was shot down. In several of the cases the Soviet Union stated that it had nothing to do with the loss of the aircraft, as with a USAF C130 that went missing over soviet Armenia in 1958. US planes also drew blood on a few occasions. On September 4, 1950 a US Navy F4U Corsair shot down a Soviet A-20 bomber while it was on a reconnaissance flight too close for the Navy's comfort. On October 8, 1950 two lost USAF P-80 Shooting Stars strafed 20-30 parked Soviet fighters (including US-lend leased P-63s!) at a military airstip 40 miles outside of Vladivostok while on a bombing misson over North Korea. In December of that same year a tail gunner aboard a US Navy P2V Neptune splashed a Soviet MiG that was trying to shoot it down while on a recon mission over Vladivostok.
All Russian documents turned over post cold war state that in most cases the U.S. plane fired on the Soviet fighters first and that they were forced to return fire, destroying it. When both countries set up the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POWs/ MIAs in 1992 to try and recover the remains of the aircrews lost, the US side acknowledged that in most cases the plane in question actually had been on an intelligence gathering mission.
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