Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) a truck, motorcar or motorcycle crash; occas. used of plane crashes.

1926		Maines & Grant Wise-crack Dict. 7/1: Crack up – Wreck of an airplane.
1935		F. Wead Ceiling Zero Act III: No spine, head or internal injuries. God! After a crack-up like that!
1936		(con. 1920s) Dos Passos Big Money in USA (1966) 990: Charley told Nat all about the crack-up. ‘Honestly, I don’t think it was my fault.’.
1939		W. Winchell On Broadway 7 Dec. [synd. col.] The first [family] explained their son had been in a motor car crack-up in Montreal.
1942		C.R. Bond 1 Mar. in A Flying Tiger’s Diary (1984) 121: I had just been telling Wade about the many RAF crackups on the field.
1949		A.I. Bezzerides Thieves’ Market 105: Even in his sleep he would dream of a crack-up and slam on the breaks and swing the wheel, screaming until he wakened.
1950		Kerouac letter 28 Dec. in Charters I (1995) 261: A crackup in which he was completely innocent while driving, but broke 2 ribs and foot.
1959		H. Ellison ‘No Game for Children’ in Gentleman Junkie (1961) 78: The dough he’d had to lay out for that crack-up and the Dodge’s busted grille.
1966		H.S. Thompson Hell’s Angels (1967) 106: A single bike accident can break a man worse than a dozen disastrous fights. Funny Sonny from Berdoo has a steel plate in his head, a steel rod in one arm [...] and a deep scar on his face – all from crackups.
1987		S. King Misery (1988) 258: Bonsaro’s near fatal crack-up in his last desperate effort to escape the police.