Kweilin Incident

A DC-2 passenger airliner
Incident summary
Date	August 24, 1938 (1938-08-24)
Summary	Strafing on the ground
Site	Zhongshan, Guangdong, China
Passengers	14
Crew	3
Fatalities	14
Injuries (non-fatal)	1
Survivors	3
Aircraft type	Douglas DC-2
Aircraft name	Kweilin
Operator	China National Aviation Corporation
Registration	32
Flight origin	Hong Kong
1st stopover	Wuchow
2nd stopover	Chungking
Destination	Chengtu

The Kweilin incident occurred on August 24, 1938 when a Douglas DC-2 airliner (the Kweilin) carrying 18 passengers and crew was destroyed by Japanese aircraft in China. There were fourteen fatalities. It was the first civilian airliner in history to be shot down by hostile aircraft. The pilot was American and the crew and passengers Chinese. As it was unprecedented for a civilian aircraft to be attacked, there was international diplomatic outrage over the incident. In the United States, it helped solidify the popular view that Japan was morally wrong in their war against China, but the incident was not enough to spur the US into action against Japan despite Chinese entreaties. The Kweilin was re-built and destroyed by the Japanese a second time two years later.

DC-2 number 32 Kweilin was owned by China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC), one of the first commercial airlines in China. It was operated under contract by Pan American pilots and management who were mostly American in 1938. The plane was on a routine civilian passenger flight from the British colony of Hong Kong to Wuchow, the first stop en route to Chungking and Chengtu in Szechwan province. From Hong Kong, Chengtu was over 750 miles (1,210 km) to the northwest. The flight had fourteen passengers, plus a steward, radio operator Joe Loh, copilot Lieu Chung-chuan, and American pilot Hugh Leslie Woods.

The Kweilin left Hong Kong at 8:04am. At 8:30am, soon after entering Chinese airspace, Woods spotted eight Japanese pontoon-fitted planes in what he believed to be an attacking formation. Woods took evasive maneuvers by circling into a cloud bank and was fired upon by the Japanese planes, their intentions made clear. As the DC-2 was unarmed, Woods put it into a fast dive to find a place to make an emergency landing, but the fields were rice paddies crisscrossed with dikes. Woods saw a river and made a perfect water landing with no injuries or damage; the plane was designed to float. However, Woods soon discovered he was the only person aboard who knew how to swim and the swift current bore the plane into full view of the circling Japanese planes. They began to strafe it with machine gun fire. Woods saw an unused boat on shore and swam to retrieve it. During the swim he was repeatedly strafed with machine gun fire but was not hit. On reaching shore, he saw the plane had drifted far down river and was so riddled with bullets it was sinking with only the tail and wing still visible. After about an hour of continuous attacks the Japanese planes left. The survivors were Woods, the radio operator Joe Loh and a wounded passenger, Lou Zhaonian. The dead included two women, a five-year-old boy and a baby. One victim had been hit thirteen times.