Historical Mishap

By Doug Scroggins

Remembering the Passengers & Crew of  TWA Flight 3

January 16, 1942

Lost Birds observes the 68^st anniversary of a Hollywood tragedy by revealing the true story behind the crash that ended the life of silver screen siren “Queen” of screwball comedy, Carole Lombard.

Lost Birds, an aviation archeological society that has investigated more than 100 crash sites around the world, separates fact from fiction in this sensational tragedy.

At 7:18 p.m., on January 16, 1942, less than one-half hour after the Los Angeles-bound TWA Flight 3, had taken off from Las Vegas, it crashed on Mount Potosi, 35 miles southwest of town.  Carole Lombard, along with her mother, press agent Otto Winkler, the three crew, one passenger, and 15 servicemen perished on board the Douglas built DC-3.

Searchers on horseback toiled over steep, snow-packed trails of the Potosi Range, seeking the spot were Flight 3, with her 22 persons aboard, crashed.  The search party forged its way up the 8,700-foot peak with little hope of finding anything more than charred bodies and twisted wreckage.  At the foot of the mountain, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard’s husband, waited in the faint hope that some of those on the plane may have survived.

The day before, Lombard’s trip on the ill-fated Flight 3 hinged on the flip of a coin. Her press agent wished to make the journey to Los Angeles by train, but Lombard held out for the plane trip, wanting to get home sooner. They finally tossed a coin and Lombard won.

At the time, there had not been a good explanation for the disaster. The pilot, Captain Wayne Williams, left Las Vegas reporting only that he had taken off and that visibility and weather conditions were good.  Flight 3 crashed near the 8,300-foot level of Mount Potosi with flaps retracted, and the plane in level flight.  Something happened inside that cockpit and happened so fast that Williams could not react. 

The sudden crash of Flight 3 against an icy Nevada mountain was so devastating that it destroyed most of the aircraft and its contents but left enough clues behind that would later baffle FBI and aviation investigators.  The central puzzle: Why, with the radio beam apparently functioning, skilled pilots at the controls, and perfect flying weather, was the plane flying 6.7 miles off its proper course?  Further complicating the dark mystery of the cause of the crash, the FBI investigated the possibility of sabotage.

At this time of the year, the peaks of Mount Potosi are covered with snow, inaccessible and impossible to film. Under the season’s snowy canvas, wreckage from Flight 3 litters the mountainside, both engines and landing gear still rest among the rocks.  Lost Birds is the only aviation archeological organization that has recorded the crash site since official investigations ended more then 68 years ago.

Photo of what the plane would have looked like.

(Archive Photo)

A look at the wreckage from Flight 3 days after the crash.

(AP photo)

The main landing gear from Flight 3. 

(photo by Doug Scroggins)

Doug Scroggins exams one of the engines from Flight 3.

(photo by Lost Birds)

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(c) 1992 - 2010 by Doug Scroggins