Question of the Day - 14 June 2025

Happy to oblige. 

But first, we too liked the VegasChanges.com Fun Fact quizzes; the one you're referring to was its 172nd. It turned out to be the penultimate quiz; VegasChanges discontinued them after 173. At 15 apiece, that's 2,600 fun facts, perhaps a limit for anyone, including us. They had a good long run and they were always fun and informative. Indeed, the whole website is great and we recommend it highly for updates on the scene, especially the photographic evidence of the changes that they cover as they occur. 

As for Carole Lombard, that's a tragic and somewhat mysterious tale. Here are the facts. 

On January 16, 1942, TWA flight #3, in a DC-3, took off from the Western Air Express airport northeast of Las Vegas. On the plane were 22 people, including 15 soldiers, a crew of three, and four civilians; three of the civilians were Carole Lombard, her mother, and her press agent.

Carole, nee Jane Alice Peters, was from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her first screen appearance was when she was eight years old, cast as a tomboy in a silent movie called A Perfect Crime. When she was 17, she was signed up as a contract actress with 20th Century Fox, then switched to Paramount Pictures five years later. A year after that in 1931 at the age of 23, she married actor William Powell, who was 39. The marriage lasted only two years.

Lombard became one of Hollywood's top comedy actresses in the 1930s; she was nominated for Best Actress in 1936 for My Man Godfrey, directed by Howard Hawks. According to all accounts, Lombard was gorgeous, glamorous, and a natural comedian, as well as down to earth and accessible. She was much beloved by the Hollywood establishment and the American public.

In the mid-1930s, Lombard got involved with Clark Gable. Their affair was clandestine at first, given that Gable was still married to his second wife Ria. Gable divorced Ria on March 7, 1939, and on March 29, he and Lombard were married. It was a successful marriage and Lombard was the true love of Gable's life.

After the U.S. entered World War II in late 1941, Lombard traveled home to Indiana for a fundraising rally for the war. She was returning to Los Angeles in mid-January and stopped over in Las Vegas to refuel the TWA DC-3 she and her mother were on. It was a clear cold night when the plane took off from Las Vegas, but 23 minutes later, a loud explosion was heard throughout Las Vegas Valley as a fireball erupted at the top of Double Up Peak on Mount Potosi, 30 miles southwest of town. All 22 passengers aboard were killed.

Carole Lombard was 34 years old.

According to reports at the time, Flight 3 was operating on its routine schedule, having stopped in Albuquerque, in Winslow, Arizona, and Las Vegas. When the plane left Las Vegas, the radio and instruments were functioning properly, the weather was satisfactory, flying conditions were good, and airway aids and lights were in order. The plane was off course by a fraction; if it had been only a few hundred yards to the left, it would've missed the 8,300-foot peak.

According to Frank Wright in his book Nevada Yesterdays, "Long afterward, there were rumors of sabotage and stories concerning the sometimes erratic behavior of the pilot, Captain Wayne Williams. Some blamed last-minute changes in the flight plan. After an extensive investigation, the FBI closed the file. A Congressional committee and the Civil Aeronautics Board had the final word. 'Extreme pilot error.'"

However, according to the website Geocities, some strange and unexplained events were afoot.

"While the official cause of the crash was ruled 'pilot error,' the question of how a highly experienced pilot could so carelessly fly his airliner into the side of a mountain on a crystal-clear evening is still a mystery.

"In 1985, over 100 declassified (but heavily censored) FBI documents from the year of the crash were finally made public. Included among the pages were copies of eyewitness statements taken by FBI agents indicating that just prior to the crash, a handful of residents in the area had reported seeing ‘mysterious lights in the sky’ just above the peak where the plane would impact. Included is a copy of a letter sent to the Chief Investigator of the Senate Sub-Committee by a Civil Aeronautics Board airways mechanic relating to an incident just south of Las Vegas near Baker, California.

"Quoting, 'I was driving south on Death Valley Highway when I glanced to the west and my partner and I both noted a light above the crestline of the mountains. The light looked just like a course light, but instead of a red lens, it had a clear one. It appeared round, like a ball. It appeared to be suspended in the sky with nothing to show how it could be supported there. It never moved and never varied. I am satisfied that it was not a star, because for one reason, it was many times brighter and larger, and when we drove back to the station about an hour later, it was gone.’

"Because no moon was out and because CAB airway light mechanics are overly familiar with where all lighted beacons are located, no explanation was ever given as to what these lights were in origin. The mechanic's letter to the Senate Sub-Committee concluded with a similar experience related to him by a ranch owner who lived outside Las Vegas and witnessed the crash. The ranch owner (who had no knowledge of the airway mechanic's story) recounted almost detail for detail what the mechanic and his partner had witnessed near Baker a few evenings before: ‘A strange round yellow light that appeared to hang in the sky like a lantern.’ When asked by the mechanic (both were presently participating in the crash search together) whether or not he was certain that this occurred prior to the accident, the rancher confirmed that not only had it preceded the crash, but ‘it was there during the crash. And then it was gone.’"

So what happened? We'll never know the whole story.

One thing we do know is that Clark Gable never recovered from the loss of his beloved young wife. For years, he was reckless on his motorbike, riding around the Hollywood Hills with no care for safety. Though he married twice more, his spark was gone. He died from a heart attack in 1960 at age 59 and was laid to rest next to Carole at Forest Lawn Cemetery.