1913–1958: an army air corps in the American mould

Cuban military flying began, by English Wikipedia’s account, on 5 July 1913, when the Cuerpo de Aviación del Ejército de Cuba was formed with a single Curtiss F flying boat; its first squadron followed on 18 May 1919 with nine Curtiss JN-4D Jennies. It grew in the American mould: by 1939 a pursuit squadron flew Vought O2U Corsairs, Curtiss Hawk IIs and Vought Kingfishers. After Fulgencio Batista’s coup the corps was reorganised on 23 April 1952 as the Fuerza Aérea del Ejército de Cuba (FAEC), recombining army and naval flying, and the United States supplied training, transports and fighters — P-47 Thunderbolts, B-26 Invaders, T-33 jets. As the revolution spread, the FAEC bought 17 refurbished Sea Furies from Hawker in 1958 (15 FB.11 and two T.20). It was an air force fighting a civil war, and it did not save the regime: Santa Clara fell on 1 January 1959, and Batista fled within twelve hours.

1959–1961: the revolution’s air force and the Bay of Pigs

The new government inherited most of Batista’s aircraft and merged them with the rebels’ own Fuerza Aérea Rebelde, mainly transports and light aircraft but including three P-51 Mustangs and a T-28. Arrests of former officers and a lack of spare parts left few aircraft flying. On 15 April 1961 eight exile-flown B-26s, launched from Nicaragua and painted in Cuban markings, struck Ciudad Libertad, San Antonio de los Baños and Santiago de Cuba; the John F. Kennedy Library says they "missed many of their targets and left most of Castro’s air force intact". From 17 April the survivors — Sea Furies, B-26s and T-33s, the only jets — attacked the landing at Playa Girón, sinking the Rio Escondido and badly damaging the Houston. By Wikipedia’s count Brigade 2506 lost nine B-26s, and it surrendered on 19 April.

1961–1963: MiGs, missiles and a Soviet regiment

Soviet equipment followed within weeks. Twenty MiG-15 fighters and four trainers arrived at the end of May 1961 and were assembled at San Antonio de los Baños from 6 June; Enrique Carreras became the first Cuban to fly one, on 24 June, according to the Latin American Aviation Historical Society. Twelve MiG-19s came from November 1961. In 1962 Moscow sent a whole fighter regiment with about 40 MiG-21F-13s, 42 Il-28 bombers and SA-2 missile batteries. During the missile crisis Cuban pilots had no radar of their own; the Smithsonian’s account says they scrambled only once, a MiG-19 after an RF-101 Voodoo. The U-2 shot down near Banes on 27 October 1962 was hit by SA-2 missiles fired by Soviet forces. The Il-28s went home; the MiG-21s stayed, and the first Cuban MiG-21 regiment formed on 10 August 1963.

1964–1991: a Soviet client air force at war in Africa

For the next quarter-century Cuba re-equipped from the Soviet Union: about a hundred MiG-17s from 1964, MiG-23BN fighter-bombers from 1978, MiG-23MF interceptors in the mid-1980s and, from October 1989, twelve MiG-29s and two MiG-29UB trainers of a planned 45. It also sent them abroad. A Cuban air contingent was in Angola from December 1975, first with MiG-17Fs and a squadron of MiG-21MFs flown in by An-22; a MiG-21 squadron went to Ethiopia in December 1977. In southern Angola Cuban MiG-21s and later MiG-23MLs fought the South African Air Force until 1988, and the claims of both sides still differ. The cost was high and the record contested: Wikipedia gives 2,016 Cuban dead in Angola from all causes between 1975 and 1991.

1991–2009: collapse, defections and the 1996 shoot-down

The Soviet collapse ended deliveries and subsidies at once. On 20 March 1991 Major Orestes Lorenzo Pérez flew a MiG-23BN to Naval Air Station Key West; two more pilots defected in September 1993, one to Key West in a MiG-21 and one to Guantánamo in a MiG-23. On 24 February 1996 a MiG-29UB, with a MiG-23 nearby, shot down two Cessna 337s of the Miami exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four men. The ICAO investigation found that both were destroyed in international airspace, nine and ten nautical miles outside Cuba’s territorial airspace; the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found in 1999 that Cuba had violated the right to life. Cuba maintained that the aircraft had repeatedly violated its airspace and had been warned. By 2007 the IISS counted 8,000 personnel, 41 combat-capable aircraft and about 189 in store.

2010–2026: an air force without fuel or fighters

English Wikipedia reports that Raúl Castro ordered full training for the MiG-29 pilots in 2010, at 200 to 250 hours a year; no official confirmation was found. The trend since then has run the other way. FlightGlobal counted five MiG-29s in operation in 2022; its directory for 2026 lists no Cuban fighter at all, only four An-24/26 transports, nine Mi-8/17 and four Mi-35 helicopters and three L-39s, because it leaves out aircraft not in day-to-day use. In 2026 the island lost its Venezuelan oil after the US operation in Caracas, aviation fuel ran short, and on 20 May 2026 the US Justice Department charged Raúl Castro and five others, among them the MiG-29 pilot of 1996, over the shoot-down. What remains is a service with a proud combat record, skilled pilots and a fleet that depended on a patron that no longer exists.