The Cuban air force in combat, 1956 to 1996
Batista’s air force, which fought the rebels in 1956–1958, was the predecessor of today’s service. Claims from the Bay of Pigs and from the air war with South Africa in Angola come from each side and are rarely independently confirmed, and each is given with the side that makes it. In the 1962 missile crisis the U-2 lost near Banes was shot down by Soviet missiles, not by Cuban forces. The 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue Cessnas is included: the ICAO investigation found both were destroyed in international airspace and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that Cuba violated the right to life, while Cuba maintained that the aircraft had repeatedly violated its airspace and had been warned. Where a consolidated sortie or loss figure exists in the official record it is given here; where accounts disagree, the range is shown and the disagreement named. Blank cells are blank because no figure could be verified, not because the fighting was small.
From Batista’s war against the rebels to the Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down of 1996.
| صراع | سنين | ضد | الطائرة الرئيسية | طلعات جوية | طائرة مفقودة | |
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| The Cuban RevolutionBatista’s air force against the rebelsFuerza Aérea del Ejército de Cuba (FAEC) | 1956–1958 | 26th of July Movement | B-26 Invader, Sea Fury, P-47Dوواحد آخر | |||
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Supported Batista’s army against the rebel columns with bombers, fighters and transports. Batista’s air force was equipped for a conventional war and used in a civil one. Its order of battle in the last weeks of the regime included B-26 bombers — Wikipedia’s table for the battle of Santa Clara lists seven — and in 1958 it bought 17 refurbished Sea Furies from Hawker. None of this stopped the rebel columns. The rebels built a small air arm of their own, the Fuerza Aérea Rebelde, mainly transports and light aircraft that carried arms and men to the Sierra, plus three P-51 Mustangs and a T-28. When Batista fled on 1 January 1959 both fleets passed to the new government, which arrested many of the old regime’s officers and soon found itself short of pilots and spare parts. حصيلة Santa Clara fell on 1 January 1959 and Batista fled within twelve hours; the rebels took over the air force and its aircraft. Air operations of 1957–1958 are poorly documented in the sources reached; no Cuban official account could be retrieved. |
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| The Bay of Pigs invasionPlaya GirónFuerza Aérea Revolucionaria (FAR) | 1961 | Brigade 2506 (supported by the United States) | Hawker Sea Fury, Lockheed T-33, Douglas B-26 | |||
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Survived the opening air strike and then attacked the invasion fleet and the exile B-26s. The invasion plan depended on destroying Castro’s small air force on the ground. On 15 April 1961 eight B-26 bombers flown by Cuban exiles took off from Nicaragua, painted in FAR markings, and struck Ciudad Libertad, San Antonio de los Baños and Santiago de Cuba. The Kennedy Library’s verdict is that they "missed many of their targets and left most of Castro’s air force intact", and when photographs of the repainted aircraft exposed US involvement, President Kennedy cancelled a second strike. When the brigade landed on 17 April, the handful of serviceable FAR aircraft — Sea Furies, B-26s and T-33 jets, the only jets Cuba had — went for the ships: the Rio Escondido was sunk and the Houston badly damaged. The T-33s are credited with several of the slower exile B-26s; Rafael del Pino is credited with two, and Sea Fury pilots Enrique Carreras Rojas and Douglas Rudd with one each. By 19 April the brigade, its supplies lost and without air cover, had surrendered. Castro later released the prisoners in December 1962 in exchange for 53 million dollars’ worth of baby food and medicine. حصيلة The brigade surrendered on 19 April. The Kennedy Library says the Cuban planes "sank two escort ships, and destroyed half of the exile’s air support"; Wikipedia’s A-26 article counts nine brigade B-26s lost with ten Cuban exile and four American aircrew. Aircraft claims on both sides are from Wikipedia and pilot biographies, not from official Cuban or US tallies; no Cuban official air-battle figures could be retrieved (minfar.gob.cu and EcuRed did not respond). Cuban losses are also contested: 176 killed is the figure given, other estimates run far higher.
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| The Cuban missile crisisthe October crisisFuerza Aérea Revolucionaria (FAR), alongside Soviet forces | 1962 | الولايات المتحدة | MiG-15bis, ميغ-19, MiG-21F-13 (Soviet-flown) | 1 | 0 | |
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Dispersed its MiG-15s and MiG-19s and ordered anti-aircraft fire on low-flying US reconnaissance aircraft; Soviet units operated the MiG-21s, Il-28s and SA-2s. In 1962 Moscow turned Cuba into a forward base: a fighter regiment with about 40 MiG-21F-13s, 42 Il-28 bombers that Wikipedia says came with tactical nuclear bombs, and SA-2 batteries at eight sites. The Cuban air force itself had only its new MiG-15s and MiG-19s and too few trained pilots to fill the squadrons. By October 1962, LAAHS says, 36 MiG-15bis and MiG-15Rbis were dispersed to San Antonio de los Baños, Santa Clara, Camagüey and Holguín. On 26 October, by Rafael Lima’s account, Rafael del Pino sent a coded order to San Antonio, Santa Clara and Holguín — "Fire on the Indians" — and Fidel Castro ordered all anti-aircraft weapons to fire on any US aircraft. Without radar the Cuban pilots could only hope for a visual sighting, and they scrambled once. On 27 October US Navy RF-8A Crusaders on low-level runs were fired on, and a Soviet SA-2 battery shot down the U-2 of Major Rudolf Anderson near Banes — the only fatal shoot-down of the crisis, and not a Cuban one. حصيلة The Soviet missiles and Il-28 bombers were withdrawn and the US quarantine ended on 20 November 1962; the MiG-21s were later handed to Cuba. في وضع الاحتراق اللاحق The Only Man Killed by Enemy Fire in the Cuban Missile Crisis Lima and English Wikipedia place the Soviet MiG-21 regiment differently: Lima at Santa Clara, Wikipedia’s San Antonio article at San Antonio de los Baños. Its regimental number is given as 213th by Wikipedia and 231st by LAAHS.
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| The Cuban intervention in AngolaOperation Carlota and the war with South AfricaFuerza Aérea Revolucionaria (FAR) expeditionary air force | 1975–1991 | South Africa, UNITA and FNLA | MiG-17F, MiG-21MF, MiG-23MLواثنان آخران | |||
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Flew air defence, ground attack and transport for the Angolan government (MPLA) against the FNLA, UNITA and the South African Defence Force. Cuban air power arrived in Angola in December 1975: LAAHS records nine MiG-17Fs and a MiG-15UTI under Major José A. Montes and a squadron of twelve MiG-21MFs flown in by An-22. Rafael del Pino commanded the first expeditionary air force until 1977; on 13 March 1976, LAAHS says, he destroyed a Fokker F-27 with an S-24 rocket. The air war with South Africa was fought on the southern front. On 6 November 1981 a South African Mirage F1CZ shot down a Cuban MiG-21MF with cannon fire, South Africa’s first confirmed air kill since Korea (Wikipedia names the Cuban pilot as Lieutenant Danacio Valdez; LAAHS as Major Leonel Ponce). From the mid-1980s about 50 MiG-23MLs flown by Cubans changed the balance. On 27 September 1987 Alberto Ley Rivas fired R-23R missiles at a pair of Mirage F1s; Captain Arthur Piercy’s aircraft was damaged and crashed on landing. Cubans claimed six MiG-23 air victories in all, one of them confirmed as destroyed by Wikipedia’s count. On 27 June 1988 MiG-23s bombed the Calueque dam; Wikipedia’s Cuito Cuanavale article says 12 South African soldiers of 8 SAI were killed. حصيلة Both sides claimed victory at Cuito Cuanavale; the New York Accords of December 1988 led to the Cuban withdrawal, completed in 1991. Kill and loss claims come from each side and are rarely independently confirmed; the Calueque death toll and the Cuban MiG-23 victory count are given as published, not verified.
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| The Ogaden WarCuba in EthiopiaFuerza Aérea Revolucionaria (FAR) | 1977–1978 | الصومال | ميغ-21 | |||
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A Cuban MiG-21 squadron flew ground attack for Ethiopia against the Somali army. Cuba sent up to 17,000 troops to Ethiopia at the peak of the offensive in January 1978, by Wikipedia’s count. LAAHS records that a squadron of Cuban MiG-21s arrived in December 1977 and, in hundreds of flights, destroyed "numerous Somalian tanks and artillery pieces". The big airmobile assault behind the Marda Pass in March 1978, which put Cuban paratroops behind the Somali lines, was flown by 20 Mi-8s and 10 Mi-6s with Soviet crews. The Ethiopian air force’s own claims of Somali MiGs destroyed are Ethiopian claims and are not attributed to the Cubans. حصيلة Somali forces withdrew after the battles around Jijiga and the Marda Pass in March 1978. The Cuban air role in Ethiopia rests on one aviation-history source (LAAHS); no Cuban official account was retrieved.
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| The Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down24 February 1996Defensa Antiaérea y Fuerza Aérea Revolucionaria (DAAFAR) | 1996 | Brothers to the Rescue (civilian aircraft) | MiG-29UB, ميغ-23 | 2 | 0 | |
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Intercepted and shot down two civilian Cessna 337s of a Miami exile group; a third escaped. Brothers to the Rescue, founded in Miami in 1991 by José Basulto to look for rafters, had by 1996 also dropped leaflets over Cuba. Cuba says light aircraft entered its airspace and dropped leaflets on 9 and 13 January 1996, and that it had protested violations since May 1994. On 24 February 1996 three of the group’s Cessna 337s flew south; a MiG-29UB shot two of them down with air-to-air missiles while a MiG-23 orbited nearby, and Basulto’s aircraft escaped. The ICAO investigation, reporting on 20 June 1996, found that both aircraft were destroyed in international airspace, nine and ten nautical miles outside Cuban territorial airspace, and that means other than interception, such as radio, had been available but not used. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Report 86/99, 29 September 1999) found that Cuba violated the right to life and the right to a fair trial; Cuba did not reply to it. Cuba’s position, as put by Miguel Alfonso Martínez of its foreign ministry, was that these were "not common civilian aircraft" and that "they were warned". On 20 May 2026 the US Justice Department unsealed a superseding indictment charging Raúl Castro, the MiG-29 pilot Lorenzo Alberto Pérez-Pérez and four others with murder and conspiracy to kill US nationals. حصيلة Condemned by UN Security Council Resolution 1067 (27 July 1996) after the ICAO investigation; the IACHR found Cuba in breach of the right to life in 1999; US indictments followed in 2003 and, against Raúl Castro and five others, on 20 May 2026. The aircraft involved are reported differently: Wikipedia’s shoot-down article gives one MiG-29UB and one MiG-23, LAAHS a MiG-23UB with MiG-29UBs, and the Brothers to the Rescue article MiG-29UBs. The IACHR record places the shoot-downs about 18 and 30.5 miles offshore; ICAO puts them nine and ten nautical miles beyond the 12-mile limit. A Cuban official response to the 2026 indictment could not be retrieved.
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تم التحقق من كل رقم
- Latin American Aviation Historical Society: The Cuban MiGs (Rubén Urribarres, 15 April 2018)Delivery dates and numbers for every MiG type; Angola and Ethiopia deployments; 1969 and 1991 defections.
- Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: Report No. 86/99, Case 11.589, Armando Alejandre Jr. et al. v. Cuba (29 September 1999)Copy at the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library. Findings on the right to life; Cuba did not reply.
- US Department of Justice: superseding indictment charging Raúl Castro and five others (20 May 2026)Defendants, charges, the US account of the shoot-down.
- John F. Kennedy Presidential Library: The Bay of PigsUS official library account of the air strike, the cancelled second strike, losses and the prisoner exchange.
- Air & Space / Smithsonian: Cuba During the Missile Crisis (Rafael Lima, November 2012)1961–1962 deliveries, bases, the "Fire on the Indians" order, the single scramble.
تم التحقق من الأرقام بتاريخ 2026-10-01. Back to the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force.