The Strange Death of Carole Lombard-Gable

For those who do not believe in curses, fate or unexplained phenomenon, then they have probably never heard of Carole Lombard. Prior to the accident that took her life (along with 21 others) she was known as one of Hollywood's most fun-loving, friendly and talented personalities. She was also the wife of legendary screen icon Clark Gable.

Just over a month following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Lombard was asked to participate in a warbond rally in her homestate of Indiana. Along for the ride was her mother and press agent (the press agent, being also a family friend who was standing in for Gable who couldn't attend). The group left Los Angeles by train and arrived in Indianapolis three days later. Lombard raised three times the original anticipated amount at the rally.

The circumstances surrounding Carole's decision to cancel the train at the last minute and instead board a T.W.A. (three letters) 21-passenger DC-3 airliner for the return journey home was later found to contain a series of events so bizarre and unbelievable that it continues to defy any and all logical explainations for the tragedy even today. Lombard's mother was not only a devout believer in numerology, but on the day of the crash she warned her daughter that "flying on the 16th of January was bad luck". In addition, because of the odd re-occurrence of the numeral three on their trip it was a sure sign that something bad was going to happen. Afterall, there were three in their party, Lombard was 33 years old, and the airliner route designation was Flight No. 3. To Carole's mother this was all just "too coincidental". They argued. The press agent flipped a coin to settle what the decision would be. Carole's mother lost.

Departing Indiana the plane touched down in St. Louis at Lambert Field where a rather "strange weather delay" grounded the flight for two hours. Strange because the weather there had been crystal clear with unlimited visibility all evening. About an hour before the plane landed a mysterious smoke front arose, cutting visibility from twelve miles down to two.

Continuing on, the plane eventually landed in New Mexico. Once there, T.W.A. officials tried to bump the Lombard party off to make way for a group of military pilots.
Lombard flatly refused the airline's request telling them she had every right to remain on board because of the nature of their trip.

The flight from New Mexico was normally a non-stop flight straight to Burbank Airport in Los Angeles, but "unusual headwinds" were whipping up over the route and the plane would have to set down in Boulder City (just outside Las Vegas) for extra fuel. But once airborne the pilot discovered that because the flight was now approximately three hours behind schedule due to the layover in St. Louis, they would not be able to make it to T.W.A.'s Boulder City airstrip before dark. Because Boulder did not have runway lights in which to guide the plane in, Flight 3 was automatically re-routed to land in Vegas instead. While the change might have otherwise seemed routine in it's nature, something else was strange. The captain of Flight 3 had only done one night flight out of Vegas before. Oddly, that had occurred exactly three weeks earlier. And three weeks earlier all the airway beacons were still lit. But then the war department ordered "lights off" due to the war emergency. Only one had been relighted since.

More warning signs - all pilot bulletin boards for the past six months advised "extreme caution" using the air route which led over Mt. Potosi, an 8500 foot mountain peak that all Vegas flights were directed to fly over at an altitude of 10,000 feet. When the Lombard plane finally took off at 7:07 p.m. the pilot was supposely unaware of the presence of Mt. Potosi 33 miles directly in front of them. Originally calculating a takeoff from Boulder at an altitude of 8000 feet, Flight 3 was now headed for disaster. At 7:20 p.m. they impacted the mountain at full crusing speed...500 feet too low. No one survived.

"Strange Lights in the Sky"

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. But stranger things were to come. In 1985 over one hundred declassified (but heavily censored) F.B.I. documents from the year of the crash were finally made public. Included among the pages were copies of eyewitness statements taken by F.B.I. 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 C.A.B. airway light mechanics are overly familiar with where all lighted beacons are located, no explaination was ever given as to what this unusual light was. The mechanic's letter to the Senate Sub-Committee concluded with a similar experience told to him by a local area ranch owner who lived outside Las Vegas and witnessed the crash. The ranch owner (who had no prior 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 Flight 3 crash search together) whether or not he was certain that this occurred before the accident, the rancher stated, it had not only preceded the crash..."it was there during it. And then it was gone."

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