In August of 1942, the war in the Pacific was a brutal tug of war. The Marines had landed on Guadalcanal and seized a half-finished airfield they named Henderson Field. For the Japanese, that dirt strip was a threat they could not ignore. What followed was a clash that became known as the Battle of the Eastern Solomons.

It was a fight carried almost entirely in the air, where carriers launched strike after strike, and Henderson Field itself became an unsinkable part of the American fleet. The Japanese lost a light carrier, precious pilots, and their chance to reinforce Guadalcanal with the speed they needed. The Americans lost planes, men, and saw the mighty Enterprise battered, but they held on.

The Battle of the Eastern Solomons did not end the war, but it showed a truth that carried forward. Sometimes victory means simply staying in the fight.

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.