A Routine Mission Gone Wrong
Here's a story that always blows my mind whenever I dig into it: on a rainy July morning in 1945, a U.S. Army bomber accidentally flew into the Empire State Building.
I know, right? It sounds like something out of an action movie plot, but this actually happened.
The pilot was 27-year-old Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith Jr. — a West Point graduate with two Distinguished Flying Crosses and over 100 combat missions under his belt. Pretty experienced, in other words. He was flying a B-25 Mitchell bomber from Bedford Army Air Field near Boston to Newark Airport, where he needed to pick up his commanding officer for a flight back to South Dakota.
Nothing special about this mission. Just a routine transport job during wartime.
But here's where things went sideways. Smith was supposed to arrive at Newark by 10 a.m., but bad weather and air traffic delays pushed his departure back. Rather than admit he'd be late (apparently even military officers don't like admitting they're behind schedule), he made a questionable decision: he decided to fly under "contact" rules, which meant staying below the clouds and navigating visually.
In thick fog. Over New York City.
When Fog Turns Deadly
Smith took off from Massachusetts at 8:55 a.m. in the rain. By the time he neared New York, visibility had gotten worse — way worse. La Guardia's control tower actually advised him to land there instead of continuing to Newark. But Smith pressed on.
That decision would change everything.
The tower cleared him to continue to Newark, but warned him they couldn't even see the top of the Empire State Building through the fog. And that's exactly where Smith ended up — flying low and disoriented, mistaking Manhattan's skyline for his approach to Newark.
At 9:49 a.m., the B-25 bomber struck the north side of the Empire State Building between the 79th and 80th floors.
The impact created a hole 18 feet wide and 20 feet deep. One of the plane's engines actually shot completely through the building and exited the other side, landing on a penthouse across the street and starting another fire. Debris rained down on nearby rooftops.
The Luck That Saved Lives
Here's the thing that really gets me about this story: it happened on a Saturday. A Saturday morning, specifically, in July.
If this had been a weekday, the death toll would have been astronomically higher. As it was, 14 people died — 11 people inside the building (office workers, a janitor, an elevator operator) and all three crew members aboard the plane. Horrible, yes, but considering what happened, the number could have been so much worse.
And then there's the elevator story.
One of the falling plane engines severed 16 elevator cables. One elevator car — with its operator, Betty Lou Oliver, still inside — began plummeting down the shaft. Seventy-five floors. That's over 1,000 feet of freefall.
Here's the thing about that fall: she survived.
How? A combination of lucky factors. The pile of severed cables at the bottom of the shaft cushioned the impact. The elevator's emergency brake system somehow engaged just enough to slow the descent. Rescuers were able to pull her from the wreckage.
Betty Lou Oliver still holds the record for the longest elevator fall ever survived. Let that sink in for a moment.
The Building That Wouldn't Quit
Here's what's always fascinated me about this story: the Empire State Building took a direct hit from a bomber and kept standing.
The B-25 weighed around 19,000 pounds and was traveling at significant speed when it struck the building. The collision with a steel-frame skyscraper should have caused catastrophic structural damage. But the building held.
Repair costs came to about $1 million in 1945 dollars — roughly $15 million in today's money. Not cheap, but not catastrophic either.
Think about that for a second. We often think of buildings as these fragile things, easily damaged by wind or earthquakes or age. But the Empire State Building took an enemy blow during wartime and essentially shrugged it off.
The building remained the world's tallest until 1971, and here we are nearly 80 years later, still marveling at it.
What We Can Learn From This
I've been thinking about this story a lot, and I think there's something profound here about how we think about risk and judgment.
Smith was an experienced pilot. He'd completed over 100 combat missions. He had two Distinguished Flying Crosses. And yet, for reasons that probably seemed logical at the time — not wanting to admit he'd be late, believing he could handle the conditions, pressed for time — he made a decision that cost 14 people their lives.
None of us want to admit when we're in over our heads. We all think we can handle one more risk, one more delay, one more deviation from the plan. But sometimes the universe has other ideas.
The Empire State Building still stands on Fifth Avenue, drawing millions of visitors each year. Most of them probably don't know this story happened. But if you ever find yourself looking up at that Art Deco spire, take a moment to appreciate what it survived.
Some buildings are just built tougher than we give them credit for. And some stories are too wild not to share.
Source: Popular Mechanics - B-25 Crash Empire State Building