Two plumes of smoke: On the building, where the plane hit.
and on the ground, where the plane fell.
July 28, 1945: A B-25 Mitchell bomber of the United States Army Air Forces crashes into the Empire State Building while flying in thick fog. The crash kills all 3 men on board, and 11 people inside the building.
The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith Jr., from Latham, Alabama, was on a routine personnel transport mission from Bedford Army Air Field in Massachusetts to Newark Metropolitan Airport (now Newark Liberty International Airport). His passengers were Staff Sergeant Christopher Domitrovich, from Granite City, Illinois; and Navy Aviation Machinist's Mate 2nd Class Albert Perna, from Queens.
Smith asked Newark for clearance to land, but was advised of zero visibility due to the fog. Coming south, he passed the Chrysler Building at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, and should have turned left, putting him over the East River. Instead, he turned right, and crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building at 34th Street and 5th Avenue at 9:40 AM. All 3 men on board died instantly. Smith was 27 years old, Domitrovich was 30, Perna only 19.
It was a Saturday, which meant that most of the building's offices were unoccupied. Had this accident happened on a workday, there could have been hundreds killed. A death toll held to 14 was practically a miracle. The Fire Department got up there, and put the fire out in 40 minutes, and it remains the highest fire ever put out by man.
One person who was at work was a 20-year-old elevator attendant named Betty Lou Oliver. She was alone in her elevator on the 80th floor when the crash happened. She was thrown out of the car, onto the floor. There's a reason you're not supposed to use elevators in the event of a fire: Smoke and flames can roar through the elevator shaft. She had severe burns, a broken pelvis, and broken bones in her neck and her back.
Rescuers found her, and stretchered her to an elevator on the 79th floor. But that elevator's cables had already been cut by flying parts from the plane's engine. Putting her on board was too much for the cables, and they snapped, sending the elevator crashing to ground level, about 1,000 feet.
If this makes her sound like the unluckiest woman in New York City, guess again: The cables had tumbled to the ground first, and acted as a cushion. And the rapid compression of air in the shaft slowed the car's descent. She did suffer further injuries, but she survived the fall, and lived on until 1999, age 74, recognized by The Guinness Book of World Records as the person who survived the longest elevator fall.
Nazi Germany had already surrendered, but America was still at war with Imperial Japan, so this crash stoked fears of an attack, even though it was on the coast that faced Germany, not the one that faced Japan. At this point, no one really knew what either enemy was capable of. After all, it could have been rogue Nazis that didn't accept their country's surrender. But it was simply pilot error.
This was the 1st time a New York skyscraper had ever been hit by a plane. It happened again only 10 months later: On May 20, 1946, again with fog the cause, a small U.S. Army Air Force plane hit the 58th floor of the 70-story 40 Wall Street, then the tallest building in Lower Manhattan, killing all 5 people on board, but no one else.
On October 11, 2006, a Cirrus SR20 plane carrying New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor, Tyler Sanger, crashed into the Belaire Apartments at 524 East 72nd Street. They were the only ones killed.
There is one other occasion when a plane crashed into a building in New York: September 11, 2001, the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. It should be noted that the B-25, including the plane that hit the Empire State Building, was 53 feet long, with a 67-foot wingspan, had a top speed of 272 miles per hour, and had a fuel tank with a 974-gallon capacity.
In contrast, the planes that hit the World Trade Center were Boeing 767s, which are 3 times as long, more than twice as wide, whose cruising speed is about double the top speed of the B-25, and have 24 times as much fuel capacity. This is the key to explaining why the Twin Towers fell and the Empire State didn't: The B-25 was nearing the end of its run, and had very little of its 974 gallons of fuel left; the 767s were 47 and 49 minutes into their flights, respectively, and still had most of their 23,980 gallons of highly flammable jet fuel.
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July 28, 1945 was a Saturday. Jim Davis, the cartoonist who draws Garfield, was born on this day.
These baseball games were played:
* The New York Giants swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Phillies at Shibe Park in Philadelphia, 2-1 and 8-2. Van Lingle Mungo was the winning pitcher in the opener, Jack Brewer in the nightcap. Mel Ott, in his final season as a player and also the Giants' manager, did not put himself into either game.
* The fog had lifted by the time the Brooklyn Dodgers were scheduled to play the Boston Braves at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers won, 2-1. Hal Gregg outpitched Jim Tobin.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 6-2 at Fenway Park in Boston.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the St. Louis Browns, 6-2 at League Park in Cleveland.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-3 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (The ballpark was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) Hank Greenberg, the 1st star player to volunteer for the war, had become the 1st star player to return from it, and went 1-for-5.
* The Chicago Cubs were leading the Cincinnati Reds, 8-3 after 8 innings at Wrigley Field, when the umpires called the game because of darkness. (At the time, there were 4 MLB stadiums that didn't yet have lights: Yankee Stadium got them the next year, Fenway Park in 1947, Tiger Stadium in 1948, and Wrigley didn't install them until 1988).
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-0 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.
* And the New York Yankees were supposed to play the Philadelphia Athletics at Yankee Stadium, but the rain from the night before, which had contributed to the fog, had left the grass at The House That Ruth Built unplayable. The game was rescheduled for September 27, and the Yankees won, 8-1. Red Ruffing went the distance. A good hitter for a pitcher, he helped his own cause with a 3-run homer.
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