The Kweilin incident occurred on August 24, 1938 when a Douglas DC-2 airliner named Kweilin carrying 18 passengers and crew was shot down 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 view that Japan was morally wrong in its war against China , however the incident was not enough to spur the United States into action against Japan despite Chinese entreaties. The Kweilin was rebuilt, renamed as the Chungking and destroyed by the Japanese army in a second attack two years later.
34-694: DC-2 number 32 Kweilin was owned by the 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 Wuzhou , the first stop en route to Chongqing and Chengdu in Sichuan province. From Hong Kong, Chengdu
68-589: A 45 percent share in CNAC. The Keys share in CNAC wound up in Intercontinent Aviation, another holding company that he had established in 1929 to handle foreign airline investments; by that stage Intercontinent itself had become part of North American Aviation, another firm founded by Keys in 1928. From 1931 until 1948 William Langhorne Bond was operations manager and vice-president of China National Aviation Corporation By 1933, Keys had retired under
102-550: 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
136-408: A cloud of scandal and near bankruptcy. Thomas Morgan was his successor as the head of Curtiss-Wright which through cross holdings ultimately controlled both North American and Intercontinent. After a series of disastrous accidents and disagreements with Chinese leaders, Morgan decided to sell the 45 percent stake held by Intercontinent in CNAC to Pan American Airways : on 1 April 1933. Morgan concluded
170-570: A different airline, Eurasia . Sun Fo later claimed a secretary had made a mistake and had publicly announced the wrong flight. It was speculated that Sun Fo intentionally announced his departure on the wrong plane, in effect sacrificing the Kweilin so that his real flight could travel unmolested. While the Japanese government never officially acknowledged why or if they attacked the Kweilin , they said henceforth that while they took care they would not accept responsibility for civilian aircraft flying in
204-432: A war zone. The Japanese Foreign Office claimed not to have fired on the aircraft but to have chased it as it was behaving suspiciously. A Japanese-language newspaper, The Hong Kong Nippo , admitted that although Sun Fo was the object of the attack, "our wild eagles intended to capture [him] alive." Three prominent Chinese bankers were among the passengers killed in the incident. They were Hu Yun ( Hu Bijiang ), Chairman of
238-862: The Bank of Communications ; Xu Xinliu , General Manager of The National Commercial Bank ; and Wang Yumei, an executive of the Central Bank of the Republic of China . Their deaths were a significant loss to the Chinese banking industry. The incident was widely reported, due, in part, to its novelty as the first time a civilian airliner had ever been brought down by hostile aircraft. A popular newsreel, titled Kweilin Tragedy , showed to sell-out crowds for weeks in Hong Kong. It had an interview with Woods and showed
272-701: The Burma Road , was among the passengers killed on the Chungking . After his death, the Chinese government named the bridge Changgan Bridge in his honor. China National Aviation Corporation The China National Aviation Corporation ( Chinese : 中國航空公司 ) was a Chinese airline which was nationalized after the Chinese Communist Party took control in 1949, and merged into the People's Aviation Company of China ( 中國人民航空公司 ) in 1952. It
306-601: The Vultee V-1A single-engine transport that "missed the boat" to Republican Spain ended up in China. Initially, the Nationalists maintained contact with the outside world through the port of Hanoi in French Indo-China , but the Japanese put pressure on the new pro-Vichy regime there to cut off relations with them in 1940–41. Flying in mainland China during the war with Japan was dangerous. A CNAC aircraft
340-520: The "mutilated airplane, scattered mail bags, and bullet-riddled corpses." After the incident, CNAC and other carriers began making night flights over China, using a new technology developed in Germany, " Lorenz ", that allowed pilots to follow an auditory radio homing-beacon to the destination. There was diplomatic outrage over the incident. In the United States, it helped solidify the popular view
374-702: The Chinese Finance Minister H.H. Kung . During World War II, CNAC was headquartered in India, and flew supplies from Assam , India, into Yunnan , southwestern China through the Hump Route over the Himalayas, after the Japanese blocked the Burma Road . Despite the large casualties inflicted by the Japanese and more significantly, the ever-changing weather over the Himalayas, the logistics flights operated daily, year round, from April 1942 until
SECTION 10
#1732782795532408-630: The Delaware-registered Civil Air Transport Inc (CAT) in an effort to save the aircraft from the Communists. After a lengthy legal battle (which went on appeal from Hong Kong to Privy Council in UK, as reported in 1951 Appeal Cases) the planes were delivered by the Hong Kong government to CAT in 1952. Moon Fun Chin , who flew supplies over the dangerous Hump Campaign to resupply the Chinese during World War Two,
442-661: The Japan was morally wrong in the war against China, but the incident was not enough to spur the US into action against Japan despite Chinese entreaties. On September 6 an aircraft of the Sino-German Eurasian Aviation Company was attacked near Liuzhou by Japanese fighters while flying from Hong Kong to Yunnan . The company had already stopped flights to Hankou after the Kweilin attack. The Kweilin
476-440: 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. It was speculated that the reason for the attack was to assassinate Chinese President Sun Yat-sen 's only son, Sun Fo , who was expected to be on the Kweilin . In fact Sun Fo had taken an earlier flight that day with
510-469: The Ministry of Communications released its revenue. An old China hand named Max Polin managed to broker a new deal between China Airways Federal and the Ministry of Communication. On 8 July, the two rival airmail operators merged into a reconfigured China National Aviation Corporation, which thereafter was better known by its acronym, CNAC. The Chinese government had a 55 percent share and Keys' interests had
544-562: The People's Aviation Company of China in May 1952, and eventually became part of CAAC Airlines in June 1953. Today the original Convair 240 (with one engine missing) is on display at a Military Aviation Museum in Beijing. Liu left China in 1971 for Australia where he died in May 1973. The remaining 71 aircraft in Hong Kong were sold by the Nationalists, who had retreated to the island of Taiwan, to
578-431: The airmail and passenger service with an inaugural flight from Shanghai to Hankou. It continued to face overwhelming political and financial difficulties, not least from the Ministry of Communications which not only collected airmail revenue from its own service but from that of China Airways Federal. By the start of 1930 China Airways Federal was at the point of bankruptcy and threatened to stop operations altogether unless
612-483: The continued Battles of Chengdu-Chongqing , Lanzhou , Changsha , Kunming , the looming Japanese invasion of Burma , Major General Mao Bangchu of the Nationalist Air Force of China was tasked with leading the exploration of suitable air-routes over the dangerous Himalayas in 1941; as a result, CNAC pilot Xia Pu recorded the first flight between Dinjan, Burma, to Kunming, China in what was to become
646-612: The end of the war. The CNAC was a smaller part of the overall re-supply operations which included the USAAF's India-China Division of Air Transport Command . After World War II, in 1946, CNAC moved from India to Shanghai, specifically Longhua Airport , located on the western shore of the Huangpu River , 10 km from the center of Shanghai. The company was a huge organization, with departments for transportation, mechanics, medicine, food, finance, etc. The employees who numbered in
680-469: The real power lay with the Minister of Communications, Wang Boqun. Two weeks later on 17 April, the Nationalists entered into a service contract with an American firm, Aviation Exploration Inc which was to establish air routes between a few of the major treaty ports and manage all operations. Aviation Exploration Inc was a personal holding company of the U.S. aviation magnate Clement Melville Keys who at
714-430: The route between Shanghai and San Francisco. The downfall of CNAC's operations came on 9 November 1949, when managing director of CNAC, Colonel CY Liu, and general manager of CATC ( Central Air Transport Corporation [ zh ] ), Colonel CL Chen with a skeleton crew defected with 12 aircraft in unauthorized take-offs from Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport to Communist-controlled China. The lead aircraft ( Convair 240 )
SECTION 20
#1732782795532748-718: The route now known as " The Hump " in November of that year. On 8, 9 and 10 December 1941, eight American pilots of the China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) and their crews made a total of 16 trips between Kai Tak Airport in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, then under attack from Japanese forces , and Chongqing, the wartime capital of the Republic of China. Together they made 16 sorties and evacuated 275 persons including Soong Ching-ling (the widow of Sun Yat-sen ), and
782-621: The sale with PanAm president Juan Trippe . Trippe almost immediately put PanAm vice-president Harold Bixby in charge of the airline's new far east operation: Bixby was well known in banking and aviation circles as the man who had put up the money for the trans-Atlantic flight of Charles Lindbergh in the Spirit of St Louis . Between 1937 and December 1941, CNAC flew many internal routes with Douglas Dolphin amphibians (Route No. 3, from Shanghai – Canton, via Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Amoy & Shantou), and Douglas DC-2s and DC-3s. In addition, three examples of
816-468: The same time was the president of Curtiss-Wright and a few other aviation firms. In June 1929, Keys set up China Airways Federal to manage the new airmail routes between Canton , Shanghai and Hankou . This new Sino-American venture faced acute resistance from military factions in South China: warlords had their own small air forces which had ambitions to earn income from airmail service between
850-462: 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
884-498: The thousands were housed in dormitories located in the Shanghai French Concession . Every morning, the company took the employees by a car convoy from the dormitories to the airport. CNAC eventually operated routes from Shanghai to Beiping , Chongqing, and Guangzhou , using Douglas DC-2 and DC-3 aircraft. Apart from purchasing war surplus planes, CNAC had also acquired brand new Douglas DC-4s , to serve
918-574: The treaty ports. Even more ominous was the opposition from Wang Po-chun the Minister of Communications; in July 1929, he went ahead and set up an airmail service, Shanghai-Chengtu Airways , owned entirely by his ministry. Wang imported Stinson planes and competed with China Airways Federal on the Shanghai-Hankou route. He became in effect the father of China's civil aviation. Despite all the odds, on 21 October 1929, China Airways Federal launched
952-475: The unprecedented Kweilin Incident two years earlier, attacks on commercial aircraft had become more common during the course of World War II. It received some local coverage for about a week but was not an international incident. For CNAC it was their second loss to a Japanese attack. Chang-Kan Chien, an American-educated Chinese architect and bridge engineer who oversaw the construction of a strategic bridge on
986-774: Was a major airline under the Nationalist government of China until the 90s. It was headquartered in Shanghai as of 1938. On 5 April 1929 the Executive Yuan of the Nationalist government of China based in Nanjing established the Chinese National Aviation Corporation, a state owned company with an authorized capital of ten million yuan . Sun Fo , Minister of Railways and son of Sun Yat Sen served as its first chairman although
1020-525: Was low on fuel, the airstrip had been attacked by five Japanese fighters minutes before and they were still circling nearby. The Japanese saw the DC-2 land and attacked it just as it rolled to a stop. The first bullet to enter the plane killed Kent instantly. The remaining passengers and crew tried to exit the plane but were either hit while inside or caught in the open while running across the airstrip. Nine were killed (2 crew and 7 passengers). The Chungking then burst into flames and would never fly again. Unlike
1054-446: 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 8:04 am. At 8:30 am, 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
Kweilin incident - Misplaced Pages Continue
1088-476: Was retrieved from the river bottom, re-built, and put back into service as DC-2 number 39, the Chungking . Its former name was not advertised in order to assuage superstitious passengers who might not want to fly in an unlucky plane. On October 29, 1940, American pilot Walter "Foxie" Kent landed Chungking at the rural Changyi Airfield in Yunnan with 9 passengers and 3 crew including himself. Unknown to Kent, who
1122-561: Was the first passenger aircraft in history to be destroyed by enemy forces, in the Kweilin Incident in August 1938. By fall 1940, CNAC operated service from Chongqing (via Kunming and Lashio ) to Rangoon , Chengdu , Jiading (via Luzhou and Yibin ) and Hong Kong (via Guilin ). As the Japanese blockade of materials, fuel and various supplies severely strangulated China's already-deprived war effort, particularly with
1156-639: Was welcomed with pomp and ceremony in Beijing, while the other 11 landed safely in Tianjin . The aircraft were pursued by Nationalist fighter planes but were shielded by heavy cloud cover. The remaining airline staff with their families (a total of 3,400) snuck into China by land or sea later. The ideology behind the defection was nationalism as they believed that the Communist Party would best lead one, strong China. On 1 August 1950, both companies came back to operate services. Later they were merged to form
#531468