Northwest Airlines Flight 5 was a regularly scheduled, multiple stop flight from Chicago Municipal Airport to Boeing Field, Seattle. It had intermediate stops at Minneapolis; Fargo, North Dakota; Billings, Montana; Butte, Montana; and Spokane, Washington. On October 30, 1941, on the flight's leg between Minneapolis and Fargo, the Northwest Airlines Douglas DC-3A-269 operating the route crashed into an open field about miles east of the Fargo airfield, just after 2:00 am local time. All 12 passengers and two of the three crew members aboard were killed.
The cause of the crash was determined to be an excessive buildup of ice on the aircraft's wings.
Clarence Bates, the flight's captain and sole survivor, died a year later in an aviation accident in St. Paul, Minnesota, test flying a Consolidated B-24.