Fireball

On January 16, 1942, TWA Flight 3 took off from McCarran Field in Las Vegas, finishing a trek from New York to Los Angeles. A few minutes after takeoff it slammed into nearby Mount Potosi, killing all aboard, including movie star Carole Lombard. What happened?

This is the subject of Robert Matzen's book Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3, which is certainly a thorough examination of the story, perhaps too thorough. I'm not sure this a book-length subject, and would have worked better as a long magazine article. When Matzen deals with the crash and its aftermath, the book works well, but he strays far too often.

When detailing the crash, the rescue effort, and the investigation into why the plane crashed, Matzen is right on target. I particularly found the effort of locals who were the first up the mountain gripping. "The only way in was over the Goodsprings Road to the old Ninety-Nine Mine Road. It was rough going all the way by any sort of vehicle, and at some point that road would be washed out and impassable. Then God help anyone continuing on by foot and then trying to climb the cliffs to the place where that plane probably went down." Once up the mountain, there was no thought of rescue: "He couldn’t believe the utter violence reflected in twisted airplane spread all over. Some of the scrub cedars in front of him still burned; they rocked and popped in the wind and their odor was pungent. From where he stood on an elevation with the wreck below in a sort of a bowl, he could look across and see suitcases and a pile of something on the ledge at the top of the oil-smeared cliff, seventy-five or a hundred feet above all the other debris, as if the plane had hit with such force that stuff was vaulted up. He could see bodies on a lower cliff, and down in the snow."

Where the book goes off the rails is in the biographies of Lombard and her husband, Clark Gable. Frequently the writing is amateurish, full of dime-store psychology: "Clark Gable, known from birth as “Billy,” became motherless before he could walk, before he could talk, before he was even done breastfeeding. In a sense he would always be cut off and distant from everyone, particularly women, bearing the pain of abandonment by his mother silently and stoically." He also take a salacious delight in describing the sex lives of those he discusses, such as Lana Turner: "Lana had been dubbed the “Sweater Girl” for obvious reasons and had already proved in Hollywood to be as easy to conquer as the Maginot Line." How could an editor have let this line go by: "Where fireball Carole Lombard had finally come to rest in another kind of fireball."

When he sticks to the crash, Matzen is meticulous. There has never been determined a clear-cut reason why the plane crashed. It was a very dark night, as it was a new moon and some signal beacons were turned off in case of Japanese attack (this was only a month after Pearl Harbor). But pilot Wayne Williams was off course: "The other pilots estimated that Williams was seven miles off course in only fifteen minutes of flight time when he hit the mountain, an unheard of discrepancy for a veteran pilot." Matzen supposes that co-pilot Morgan Gillette filed a flight plan for leaving from nearby Boulder City, where the plane was supposed to land, but due to delays could not, because that airport's runway had no lights.

He does give us a vivid picture of Lombard, who was born in Indiana, and was selling war bonds there when she wanted to hurry home, Matzen says because she was eager to get back to Gable because she was jealous of Lana Turner. Her mother was going with her, and she was deathly afraid of flying. Otto Winkler, Gable's right-hand man, also attempted to get Lombard to take the train, but a coin flip settled their fate. A few other people were bumped off the flight for the servicemen, so there's an eerie "hand of fate" vibe going on. Of course, this happens to us all the time, but when it is an event so famous it becomes more palpable.

One thing I' m curious about. According to the website of The Pioneer Saloon, which is in Goodsprings, Nevada, and the closest place to the crash site, Gable waited at the bar for three days for word of Lombard. In Matzen's book, he waits at the El Rancho Hotel in Vegas, and there is no mention that he ever set foot in the Saloon. Somebody is telling a fib.