The game was working fine for a while - however when i click to load a saved career file the game screen turns white
and crashes back to the desktop.

Perhaps the save file got corrupted somehow - but the game had exited fine. Did nothing to the computer, was left running, and then restarted the game and this issue happened. Restart of computer and same issue when trying to load the saved file.

Anyone else experience this, or ideas of what happened?

Just a bit more info - the ctd appears to occur when the first page of the flight log during career mode is almost filled.

I noticed both times the crash occurred that the flight log page was almost filled - maybe 2-3 empty spots
at bottom of the page.

What campaign are you playing and ay what point are you in (date)? I have the same problem - the game crashes each time for me now - I think the game should play the D-Day video (I'm flying USAF 1944 campaign and am currently at the start of June) and this causes the game to crash. Perhaps in your campaign some video also is supposed to play and that is causing the crash for you?