The first Western aircraft ever confirmed as intercepted and shot down by the PVO during the Cold War was this US Navy Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer, felled by La-11 interceptors over the Baltic Sea on 8 April 1950. Assigned to Patrol Squadron 26 (VP-26), it wore the serial number 59645 and was nicknamed the ‘Turbulent Turtle’. It was painted in non-specular blue overall, and its livery was badly worn out after months of intensive operations around the periphery of the USSR in the Baltic Sea. Frequently rotated between its home-base, Naval Air Station Patuxent River, and forward base, Port Lyautey in French Morocco, it wore the tailfin code HB from November 1946 until July 1950, when this was replaced by EB. While earlier photographs show it wearing a large 7 on the forward fuselage, and service title Navy on the rear, as far as is known, both had been removed by April 1950. It is shown here fully armed, though is believed to have been unarmed at the time it was shot down. (Artwork by Tom Cooper)