Summary: At 9 am the C-46D took off from Kingman Army Airfield on an instrument flight to Deming, New Mexico. Aboard the plane were 1st Lt. John Trevisani, pilot; Flight Officer Gilbert Castle, copilot; Corporal Charles Wilkins, flight engineer; Staff Sergeant Henry Ferrusi, radio operator, and 33 passengers. Once the war ended in 1945, the Kingman airport was designated as a storage and salvage depot where thousands of bombers, fighters and trainers were parked and eventually scrapped and smelted down for their aluminum. The 33 passengers were mainly pilots and aircrew who had been ferrying warbirds from all corners of the earth to the airfield for this scrapping operation.

During the take-off the aircraft experienced trouble and used most of the runway,and staggered in a tail-low attitude and gaining very little altitude.  As it approached a group of parked bombers waiting to be salvaged, black puffs of smoke were seen trailing from each engine and the aircraft immediately began losing altitude. The C-46 crash landed between two sections were bombers were stored and burst into flames. Fortunately, the 37 crew and passengers were able to successfully abandon the aircraft with only very minor injuries, however losing most of their luggage in the subsequent fire.

Investigators colcluded there may have been a malfunction with the flaps as they were in the down position at take off, yet the cockpit indicator showed them as up. Additionally, the puffs of smoke coming from the engine was due to the pilot throwing the engines in high boost without prior reduction of the throttle settings.

The wreckage was cleaned up by salvage crews and due to its ease of accessibility and closeness to the airport, very little debris was left.

In 2007, I had the pleasure to speak with Gilbert Castle (1926-2014) who remembered the crash very well and enjoyed recalling the events that led up to it. In the crash, he lost everything he had in the fire and escaped with only the clothes on his back. He humerously recalled that he sent his dad a telegram asking for $100 as all of his belongings burned up in the crash. Shortly afterwards, he received a telegram from his dad stating, "I don't send money to liars."  In response, Gilbert clipped the article from the local Kingman newspaper and mailed it to his dad, and, a few days later he received the $100.