All ten people on board were killed: six passengers, including three members of the Australian Cabinet and the Chief of the General Staff; and four crew.

The deaths of the three cabinet ministers severely weakened the United Australia Party government of Robert Menzies and contributed to its fall in 1941.

[2] A16-97, the aircraft involved in the crash, was part of a batch of 100 Lockheed Hudson bombers newly ordered for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).

It was the first Hudson in the RAAF to be fitted out with passenger seating, to be reserved for transporting "essential maintenance stores and personnel to advanced operational bases", as well as ministerial traffic when required.

[6] Fairbairn had been working at his departmental headquarters in Melbourne and requested the flight in order to attend an important cabinet meeting on defence policy, which would discuss the allocation of Australian resources in the war.

[7] It had been called partially in response to a telegram from Winston Churchill to Menzies outlining his views on the prospect of war with Japan.

[12] The Perth Daily News reported: "The plane was seen by watchers at the Canberra Aerodrome and the Air Force station to circle the drome, and then rise and head south.

After about half-an-hour, when the blaze had died down, it was seen that the entire undercarriage, wings and structural supports of the plane had been torn away and were a smouldering mass in which were the charred bodies of those on board.

A World War I veteran who had been awarded the Military Cross, Street entered Federal Parliament in 1934 and became Minister for Defence in 1938.

With a background of service with Australian forces in South Africa in 1902–03, White served as Chief of Staff to Generals Bridges and Birdwood during World War I.

[16][17] More recently the RAAF Historian C. D. Coulthard-Clark, in his book The Third Brother, called into question the flying ability of the pilot-in-command, FLTLT Hitchcock.

[18] The Court of Inquiry into the accident found that it was most likely from the aircraft stalling on its landing approach, resulting in loss of control at a height too low to recover.

[20] Goodwin's report, issued on 27 August, accepted the identification of the victims made by Duncan Mackellar, the medical superintendent of Canberra Hospital.

Mackellar was a general practitioner with limited experience in forensic medicine,[21] and faced difficulties in distinguishing between the victims' bodies which had been burned beyond recognition.

[29] The Air Board separately constituted a three-person Service Court of Inquiry led by Wing Commander Leon Lachal and assisted by Squadron Leader Frederick Stevens and Pilot Officer George Pape.

[31] The conclusion of the Murphy and Lachal reports was immediately disputed by the RAAF's Director of Training George Jones, who stated "I cannot believe that a pilot of Hitchcock's experience would stall the aircraft under the circumstances which apparently existed".

He recalled a discussion he had with Sir Harry White, Australia's first National Librarian, whose friend, Norman Tritton, was Prime Minister Menzies' Private Secretary.

Tritton had told White that he had been allowed access to the crash site itself, and the body of Fairbairn was still strapped into the pilot's seat.

As a general election was already due by the end of the year, it was felt prudent to call it for September, to avoid the necessity of also holding three by-elections for such a short term.

In April 2022 the New Zealand artist Anthonie Tonnon released a single entitled Lockheed Bomber based on the disaster.