A plane crashes into the world’s tallest building. September 2001? No, July 1945
If I asked you to name an incident in which a plane crashed into the world’s tallest building, you’d probably name the World Trade Center terrorist attacks that happened on September 11, 2001. Well, another event that fits this description happened 56 years earlier. I was unaware of this until a few days ago.
On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber that was heading towards Newark Airport (after trying unsuccessfully to land at Laguardia in heavy fog) slammed into the Empire State Building. The impact created a hole in the building 20 feet high by 18 feet wide between the 78th and 79th floor. As World War II was still raging in the Pacific, many people’s first reaction was that a Japanese balloon bomb caused it.
Fourteen people were killed in the accident: the 4 crewmen on the plane; 9 office workers in the resulting fire; and 1 woman in an elevator when one of the plane’s engines fell into the elevator shaft and severed the cable of the elevator car in which she was traveling. (Amazingly, another woman survived in that elevator after plummeting 75 floors. According to the site damninteresting.com, the woman, Betty Lou Oliver, currently holds a world record for surviving a free fall from this height). By the way, the other engine ended up crashing through the roof of an artist’s sculpture studio in a building next to the Empire State Building.
If there is any silver lining in this disaster, it’s that the crash occurred on a Saturday morning, so much of the building and surrounding area was not as populated as it might have been on a weekday.
Check out this newsreel video from 1945 about the accident, complete with suspenseful background music.
And if disasters are your thing, check out our expansive Disasters Timeline.
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