The official narrative from Havana was one of defended sovereignty. The facts, as established by international investigations, present a colder sequence. On February 24, 1996, two single-engine Cessna Skymasters operated by the Miami exile group Brothers to the Rescue took off from Florida. Their mission, as it had been for years, was humanitarian: to patrol the Florida Straits, spot rafts carrying Cuban refugees, and report their位置 to the U.S. Coast Guard. That day, four men were aboard the two planes.
At approximately 3:21 p.m., Cuban Air Force MiG-29UB fighters, piloted by Cubans trained in Russia, intercepted the civilian aircraft. The MiGs fired two R-60 heat-seeking missiles. The first Cessna, call sign N2456S, was hit and disintegrated. The second, N5485S, was hit and crashed into the sea. All four men aboard were killed. The incident occurred in international airspace, approximately 10 nautical miles north of the 12-nautical-mile Cuban territorial limit.
The U.S. response was diplomatic and financial, not military. President Clinton tightened the embargo. The UN Security Council condemned the use of weapons against civilian aircraft. The International Civil Aviation Organization concluded Cuba acted contrary to international law. The pilots of the MiGs were decorated as Heroes of the Republic of Cuba. The event exists now as a stark coordinate in the long, bitter geography of U.S.-Cuba relations: a point in neutral space where unarmed search planes met advanced military ordnance. The dialogue ended there, replaced by the finality of radar signatures vanishing from a screen.