Canadian Pacific Flight 307 (a DC-6 named “Empress of Mexico City”) took off from Vancouver at 13:47 BST for a flight to Hong Kong with stops at Cold Bay and Tokyo. Cold Bay weather reported to the crew was indefinite ceiling, 500 feet sky obscured; visibility 1,5 miles; light drizzle, fog; temperature 47F; dewpoint 46F; wind WNW 21 knots. At 20:35 the crew reported over the Cold Bay range station outbound on a standard instrument approach to runway 14. The procedure turn inbound was completed at 20:42. When the aircraft broke through the clouds it may have been too close in and high. Combined with an excessive groundspeed due to quartering tailwind, this may have caused the pilot-in-command to decide to go-around. Power was applied and flaps raised fully (instead of retracted to 20 degrees). The aircraft then struck the ground in a descending left turn and caught fire. PROBABLE CAUSE: “The full retraction of the wing flaps at low altitude during a circling approach without necessary corrective action being taken by the crew.”