Carole Lombard (1908 – 1942) was an American film actress. She was the highest-paid star in Hollywood by the late 1930s. Lombard married actor Clark Gable at the height of her career in 1939.

In early January 1942, Lombard traveled to Indiana for a war bond rally with her mother, Bess Peters. She was able to raise over $2 million in defense bonds in one evening.

In the early morning hours of January 16, Lombard and her mother boarded a Transcontinental and Western Air Douglas DST (Douglas Sleeper Transport) aircraft.

After refueling in Las Vegas, Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 3 took off at 7:07 pm and crashed into "Double Up Peak" near the 8,300-foot (2,530 m) level of Potosi Mountain, 32 miles (51 km) southwest of the Las Vegas airport.

All 22 aboard, including Lombard, her mother, and 15 U.S. Army soldiers, were killed instantly. The cause of the crash was determined to be linked to the pilot and 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 used to direct night flights were turned off, leaving the pilot and crew of the TWA flight without visual warnings of the mountains in their flight path.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared Lombard to be the first war-related American female casualty of World War II, and Gable received a personal note of condolence. Lombard was 33 years old.

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