Catalina Affair

Date: June 13, 1952 • Location: Ventspils, Latvia

Soviet aircraft shot down a Swedish military plane carrying out signals-intelligence gathering operations, followed three days later by the shootdown of a second plane searching for the first one.

The Catalina affair was a military confrontation and Cold War-era diplomatic crisis in June 1952, in which Soviet Air Force fighter jets shot down two Swedish aircraft over international waters in the Baltic Sea.