TWA Flight 3 Crash

Date: January 16, 1942 • Location: Sandy Valley, United States

TWA Flight 3 crashed into Potosi Mountain in Nevada, killing actress Carole Lombard and all of the other 21 people on board.

TWA Flight 3 was a twin-engine Douglas DC-3 propliner, registration NC1946, operated by Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA) as a scheduled domestic passenger flight from New York, New York, to Burbank, California, in the United States, via several stopovers including Las Vegas, Nevada. On January 16, 1942, at 19:20 PST, fifteen minutes after takeoff from Las Vegas Airport bound for Burbank, the aircraft was destroyed when it crashed into a sheer cliff on Potosi Mountain, 32 miles (51 km) southwest of the airport, at an elevation of 7,770 ft (2,370 m) above sea level. All 22 people on board, including movie star Carole Lombard and her mother, Clark Gable's press agent Otto Winkler, three crew members, and 15 U.S. Army soldiers died in the crash. The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) investigated the accident and determined that the cause was a navigation error by the captain.