Carole Lombard and Flight 3: A Movie Star's Mysterious Death

Liz Ronk

Jan 16, 2017

On Jan. 16, 1942, Carole Lombard was best known as a screwball comedy actress. But not only was Lombard the highest paid actress of her time—starring in movies such as Twentieth Century, My Man Godfrey and Hitchcock’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith—she was also an outspoken New Deal Democrat, a supporter of FDR and the ongoing war effort.

That day, 75 years ago, she had just completed a major fundraising effort, raising over $2 million on her War Bond Tour. War bonds, created by U.S. Treasury department, allowed everyday Americans to invest in the war effort as well as their own futures, as the bonds supported the war in the short-term but could be cashed in for their full value a decade later. She had traveled to her home state of Indiana with her mother, Elizabeth Peters, and the press agent Otto Winkler—who worked with her husband, Clark Gable—for a three-day event to encourage citizens to buy those bonds.

But instead of returning home to California, they met an unfortunate and untimely death when the plane they were on, Flight 3, crashed into the side of the treacherous Mount Potosi in Nevada.

By all accounts, Carole Lombard should not have been on this plane in the first place. She had been advised to take a train home, given problematic weather and wartime fears, but insisted on flying instead. According to the coverage in the Jan. 26, 1942 issue of LIFE, "She told LIFE’s Photographer Myron Davis that though she had been strongly urged to return to Hollywood by rail, she had found herself unable to face three days on the 'choo-choo train.'”

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Newlyweds Clark Gable and Carole Lombard Gable pose for a series of official photos at their ranch in Encino California in April 1939. Douglas Cohen Collection—Courtesy of GoodKnight Books 

The crash was surrounded by mystery at the time. Why did an experienced pilot crash into the mountain, observers wondered? Was it just an accident? Or, given that the U.S. had been attacked at Pearl Harbor just a month earlier, was it something even darker? Had Lombard, the war-effort activist, been sabotaged by German spies?

Another mystery was why Lombard really decided she had to fly. One theory indicates that her hurry to get home was due to a possible affair between her husband and Lana Turner. According to author Robert Matzen, "At the end of January 15, 1942, she decided she had done her duty – and now it was time to take care of Carole Lombard by getting home to her carousing husband by the fastest means possible. That meant air travel, something expressly forbidden because of the fear of accidents in wintry weather or sabotage by Hitler’s spies. To which the response was predictable: Kiss my ass.”

In the new trade paperback of Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3, Matzen takes a deep dive into the life of Carole Lombard and the other passengers and pilot on Flight 3 with an expanded section of photos, many of them included in this gallery.

 
 The TWA DC-3 Sky Club shown is identical to the ship that crashed into Mt. Potosi, Nev., on Jan. 16, 1942.


At the end of a long day, Carole poses with her mother, Elizabeth “Petey” Peters in the Claypool.



TWA air hostess Alice Getz poses with veteran Capt. Wayne Williams beside a DC-3. Both would be killed in the crash of TWA Flight 3.


The plane struck the cliff at center in the photo and exploded, setting off a fuel fire that rose hundreds of feet in the night sky.



 Warren E. Carey of the Civil Aeronautics Board stood in the snow and drew this map of the crash scene on Jan. 18, 1942.




 Battling the worst terrain in the western United States, a rescue team tries to climb Mt. Potosi, Nev., less than 24 hours after the crash of TWA Flight 3.


 Weary recovery team members take a break two days after the crash on Jan. 18, 1942.




Three days after the crash of Flight 3, Clark Gable emerges from his bungalow at the El Rancho Las Vegas with MGM VP Eddie Mannix and Gable friend Al Menasco. Their task is to choose caskets for Gable's wife, mother-in-law and best friend.

https://time.com/4631701/carole-lombard-flight-3/