On August 24, 1938, the world witnessed a grim first in the history of flight. A China National Aviation Corporation Douglas DC-2 named Kweilin lifted off from Hong Kong on a routine passenger run. Painted clearly with civilian markings, the airliner was no military threat to anyone. Yet over the Pearl River, Japanese fighters intercepted the unarmed plane and opened fire. What followed was a shocking act of brutality as the aircraft was strafed in the water and most of its passengers and crew were killed.

The attack sent shockwaves across the globe, not only for the lives lost but because it marked the very first time a civilian airliner had been deliberately shot down in war. In today’s episode of Dave Does History, we look back at the Kweilin Incident, the people who perished, the survivors, and the lasting impact it had on aviation and the wider war in Asia.

On the evening of August 23, 1939, a photograph was taken inside the Kremlin that, to this day, ought to make the blood run cold. At the table sat Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, pen in hand, and Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin’s trusted diplomat. Hovering behind them with an oddly satisfied grin was Joseph Stalin. They had just signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a document whose public terms promised peace between Germany and the Soviet Union, but whose secret clauses carved up Eastern Europe like a butcher portioning a carcass. In that moment, two regimes that loathed each other shook hands, and the fuse for the Second World War was lit. For too long, history has let Stalin hide in Hitler’s shadow. The Soviet Union was not merely a victim of Hitler’s later betrayal. It was an accomplice in starting the war and in enabling the Holocaust that followed in Poland.