Video: 'Carole Lombard Paramount Death Report Footage'

(Friday, January 16, 1942, 7:20 p.m. PST) — Academy Award nominated actress Carole Lombard, particularly noted for her energetic, often off-beat roles in screwball comedies, and 21 other people, including Lombard’s mother, were killed tonight when TWA Flight 3 crashed into a mountain near Las Vegas.

Lombard, who was married to film icon Clark Gable, was 33 years old.

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When the U.S. entered World War II at the end of 1941, Lombard traveled to her home state of Indiana for a war bond rally with her mother, Bess Peters, and Clark Gable’s press agent, Otto Winkler. Lombard raised more than $2 million in defense bonds in a single evening.

Her party had initially been scheduled to return to Los Angeles by train, but Lombard was eager to reach home more quickly and wanted to travel by air. Her mother and Winkler were afraid of flying and insisted that the group follow their original travel plans. Lombard suggested that they flip a coin; they agreed, and Lombard won the toss.

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In the early morning hours of Jan. 16, 1942, Lombard, her mother and Winkler boarded a Transcontinental and Western Air Douglas DST (Douglas Sleeper Transport) aircraft to return to California.

After refueling in Las Vegas, TWA Flight 3 took off at 7:07 p.m. and crashed into Double Up Peak near the 8,300-foot level of Potosi Mountain, 32 statute miles southwest of the Las Vegas airport. All 22 aboard, including Lombard, her mother, and 15 U.S. Army soldiers, were killed instantly.

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The cause of the crash was attributed to the flight crew’s inability to properly navigate over the mountains surrounding Las Vegas.

As a precaution against the possibility of enemy Japanese bomber aircraft coming into American airspace from the Pacific, safety beacons normally used to direct night flights had been turned off, leaving the pilot and crew of the TWA flight without visual warnings of the mountains in their flight path.