His daughter, Tracy Nelson has had to put down those rumors of how he died often. For those who don’t know, urban legends had all of the deaths on the plane caused by the band freebasing cocaine which started the fire. There was no evidence ever that was the cause of the fire.
I saw a documentary about that DC-3 crash I think it was on YouTube.
Terrible crash terrible fire and the fire was caused by a leaky fuel line that went from the gasoline tank to the heater which burned the fuel and it was a stress fracture of that feed to the heater and it leaked out in the interior of the cabin was in flames and when they got to the wreck I notice it everybody in the cabin was piled up behind the Pilot’s cabin door trying to escape the heat in the Flames by moving forward.
The plane was a nostalgic plane I can’t remember if it was Buddy Holly’s actual DC-3 or not but they rented it for this flight because it was a special plane in the history of rock and roll, and there was some significance in using it that particular day, otherwise they would have been on their regular Charter.