On 26 June 1946, during the civil war between the Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party of China) and the Communists, Kuomintang Army 8th Air Group pilot Liu Shanben hijacked an American bomber, a B-24M Liberator, during a flight from Kunming to Chengdu Airbase and landed it in Yan'an, which was controlled by the Communists.
In Yan'an, Liu Shanbein was greeted as a hero, and a large-scale propaganda campaign was conducted in Communist newspapers. The defector was rewarded and appointed deputy director of an aviation school. However, during a raid on the airfield, the hijacked aircraft was damaged by Kuomintang "Mustangs" (North American Aviation P-51 Mustang fighter-bombers) and was not repaired. In general, the Chinese pilot’s act was the first in a series of similar moves.
In late 1948 and early 1949, two more hijacked B-24M Liberators landed at the Yan'an airfield but were still not used due to a lack of spare parts.
From the middle of 1946 until 1 October 1949, 22 more planes were hijacked from the Kuomintang and taken by the Communists. In total, 62 people - pilots, soldiers, and officers from airfield personnel and engineers escaped by combat aircraft.
All the defectors subsequently worked on the creation of the Chinese Air Force. However, there was also a hijacking case against the Communists for the Kuomintang: on 20 September 1948, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain was hijacked from the 104th Squadron; the pilots were forced to fly to an enemy position.
Subsequently, there were several instances of combat aircraft being hijacked. On 21 September 1953, North Korean Air Force Lieutenant and Communist No Kum-sok hijacked a new Soviet MiG-15 jet fighter aircraft and brought it to South Korea.
All of his relatives and colleagues in North Korea were executed. On 11 November 1965, Li Xianbin landed an Ilyushin Il-28 jet bomber at Chiang Kai-shek Airport, for which he received 100 kilogrammes of gold. On 15 August 1966 Munir Redfa, a pilot from Iraq, flew a MiG-21 to Israel. On 6 September 1976, Senior Lieutenant Viktor Belenko flew a MiG-25P aircraft from the Far Eastern airfield of Sokolovka to Hakodate Airport in Japan.
