This kind of stuff really happened. My late father was out with the fleet in the late 1950’s, and many years later he told me of seeing a Russian Bear recon plane buzz the fleet. A few minutes later there was a column of smoke on the horizon when Navy planes shot the Bear down. This was in retaliation for some Soviet shootdown of an American plane somewhere.
People don't realize few wars have a neat beginning and ending.There are incidents and confrontations,even pitched battles before and often after the official dates.Neither the Us nor the USSR wanted a full scale nuclear exchange but that didn't mean lots of intimidation didn't happen.
This happened a lot in the 1950s. The Cold War was still hot in those days.
>This kind of stuff really happened.
There are a number of incidents here.
CASUALTIES OF THE COLD WAR
http://www.3ad.org/coldwar/coldwar_casualties.htm