On February 3, 1959, American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and "The Big Bopper" J. P. Richardson were all killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, together with pilot Roger Peterson.

At the time, Holly and his band, consisting of Waylon Jennings, Tommy Allsup, and Carl Bunch, were playing on the "Winter Dance Party" tour across the American Midwest.

After stopping at Clear Lake to perform, and frustrated by the conditions on the tour buses, Holly chose to charter a plane to reach their next venue in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Soon after takeoff, late at night and in poor, wintry weather conditions, pilot Peterson lost control of the light aircraft, a Beechcraft Bonanza, which crashed into a cornfield, killing all four on board.

Various monuments have been erected at the crash site and in Clear Lake, where an annual memorial concert is held at the Surf Ballroom, the venue that hosted the artists' last performances.

"[4] For the start of the "Winter Dance Party" tour, Holly assembled a band consisting of Waylon Jennings (bass), Tommy Allsup (guitar) and Carl Bunch (drums), with the opening vocals of Frankie Sardo.

New hit artist Ritchie Valens, "The Big Bopper" J. P. Richardson and the vocal group Dion and the Belmonts joined the tour to promote their recordings and make an extra profit.

Richardson and Valens began experiencing flu-like symptoms, and drummer Bunch was hospitalized for severely frostbitten feet, after the tour bus stalled in the middle of the highway in subzero temperatures near Ironwood, Michigan.

[10] On Monday, February 2, the tour arrived in Clear Lake, west of Mason City, Iowa, having driven 350 miles (560 km) from the previous day's concert in Green Bay.

Clear Lake had not been a scheduled stop; tour promoters hoped to fill the open date and called Carroll Anderson, the manager of the local Surf Ballroom, and offered him the show.

The next scheduled destination after Clear Lake was Moorhead, Minnesota, a 365-mile (590 km) drive north-northwest—and, as a reflection of the poor quality of the tour planning, a journey that would have taken them directly back through the two towns they had already played within the last week.

[11] Bob Hale, a disc jockey with Mason City's KRIB-AM, was emceeing the concert that night and flipped the coin in the ballroom's side-stage room shortly before the musicians departed for the airport.

In a 2009 interview, Dion said that Holly called him, Valens and Richardson into a vacant dressing room during Sardo's performance and said, "I've chartered a plane, we're the guys making the money [we should be the ones flying ahead]...the only problem is there are only two available seats."

The weather at the time of departure was reported as light snow, a ceiling of 3,000 feet (900 m) AMSL with sky obscured, visibility six miles (10 km) and winds from 20 to 30 mph (17 to 26 kn; 32 to 48 km/h; 8.9 to 13.4 m/s).

He was able to clearly see the aircraft's tail light for most of the brief flight, which started with an initial 180 degree left turn to pass east of the airport, climbing to approximately 800 feet (240 m) AGL.

[12] Later that morning at daylight, after several attempts to contact the plane were unsuccessful, Dwyer retraced Peterson's planned route by air, and around 9:35 am he spotted the wreckage less than six miles (10 km) northwest of the airport.

On the night of the accident visual flight would have been virtually impossible due to the low clouds, the lack of a visible horizon and the absence of ground lights over the sparsely populated area.

Forest Lawn Cemetery moved his body to a more suitable area after plans were made to erect a bronze statue near his gravesite to accompany a newly received historical marker.

A longstanding rumor surrounding the accident, which this re-examination sought to confirm or dispel, asserted that an accidental firearm discharge took place on board the aircraft and caused the crash.

It had also been speculated that Richardson initially survived the crash and crawled out of the wreckage in search of help before succumbing to his injuries, prompted by the fact that his body was found farther from the plane than the other victims.

A funeral was held the next day at St. Paul Lutheran Church in his hometown of Alta; Peterson was buried in Buena Vista Memorial Cemetery in nearby Storm Lake.

In 1989, Ken Paquette, a Wisconsin fan of the 1950s era, made a stainless-steel monument that depicts a guitar and a set of three records bearing the names of the three performers killed in the accident.

[38] Paquette created a similar stainless-steel monument to the three musicians located outside the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where Holly, Richardson, and Valens played their penultimate show on February 1.

describes a fictional attempt by a sextet of famous slapstick characters (Chico and Harpo Marx, Abbott and Costello, and Laurel and Hardy) to prevent the accident from occurring.

[55] TJ Klune's 2020 fantasy novel "The House in the Cerulean Sea" features an orphaned antichrist, Lucy, who collects records of Holly, the Big Bopper, and Valens, and discusses the crash with the protagonist, Linus.