Bedford Air Force Base, Massachuetts. The time is 8.55 a.m. on 28 July 1945. The day is unpleasant and cold. Thick clouds, which the sun fails to pierce, cover the sky. Occasional dew. The war in Europe has been over for two months, the one with Japan is still going on, but its defeat is only a matter of days away, even though the air base knows nothing about the atomic bomb. The time for major disasters has passed, or so the officers hope.
Colonel Willliam F. Smith Jr. will fly the last leg of his routine flight. His twin-engine B-25 bomber is with the 457th Bombardment Group, based in South Dakota. Smith flies his aircraft in stages across America. Bedford is his last stop before his final destination, Newark Airport in New Jersey.
Smith is an experienced and decorated pilot. Originally from Alabama, he graduated from the elite West Point Military Academy in 1942. During the war, he flew more than 100 combat missions over Germany, 34 times as a “Flying Fortress” pilot. After 18 months in Europe, the 27-year-old, looking exactly as Hollywood imagines its film heroes, returned home to America in June 1945.
In addition to the pilot, there were two other passengers on board that day; Christopher S. Dimitrovich, a guide, also a decorated aviator, and Albert G. Perma, an aircraft mechanic with the Bedford Naval Air Station. Perma is just a passenger on the plane, as he wants to get to New York City via Newark. He is returning home to his parents to help them get over the pain of losing his brother, who was killed in Okinawa in a Japanese suicide kamikaze attack on the destroyer Lucy.
At exactly five minutes to nine, the B-25 pulls off the runway and flies its last leg. Weather forecasters have predicted fog for the entire east coast of America, which is expected to persist for some time, and very low cloud cover.
The clock in the Empire State Building in Manhattan, New York, reads exactly 9.40 a.m. The Empire State Building is a city unto itself, a city of verticals. The skyscraper has 102 floors and is 381 metres high, with 200,000 m2 of usable floor space. Its steel girders alone weigh 55 000 tonnes and could be used to lay railway tracks from New York to Baltimore. It opened on 1 May 1931 and in 1945 was still the tallest building in the world.
In the early years, New Yorkers started calling it the Empty State Building, because in times of economic crisis it was very difficult to find tenants for such expensive space and many offices were empty. This only changed with the start of World War II, and by the end of the war, NBC Radio was headquartered here and most of the other spaces had been rented out, mostly to organisations set up to meet America’s needs in the war.
But on the morning of 28 July, the skyscraper still deserved its old name. On Saturday, even though it was still wartime, people in New York were not working, or working to a reduced extent. Even the observation decks on the 86th and 102nd floors, where up to 10,000 visitors swarmed on weekends, were deserted. The upper part of the skyscraper was shrouded in fog and clouds. From the top, in fine weather, you could see 103 kilometres away, but on this day visibility was only a few metres. While on a normal weekday up to 15,000 people work in the Empire State Building, on 28 July there were only 1,500.
At La Guardia Airport in Queens, New York, Victor Barden, the air traffic controller, reported for duty at 0945. Suddenly, Colonel William F. Smith radioed him, telling him that he was 15 miles to the south and asking for information on the weather at Newark Airport. Barden was surprised, for Newark was 15 miles southwest of La Guardia. Smith must have been about to reach his destination with his plane. He was therefore advised by air traffic control to ask Newark directly for weather information.
Two minutes later, La Guardia controllers spotted a B-25 in the sky south-east of the airfield.Barden assumed Smith was trying to land, so he gave him the usual instructions for landing military aircraft. To his surprise, however, he was alerted by military air traffic control at the airfield that his weather data was incorrect. There is no bad weather over Newark, with clouds at 300 metres and visibility of almost three kilometres. Barden immediately forwarded the military air traffic control information to Smith and suggested that he decide for himself whether to land or proceed to Newark, given the different weather data. Smith decided to continue the flight.
Fool, climb up!
La Guardia is located directly on the East River, in the borough of Queens. If Smith had flown in a small circle to the east, he would have arrived in Newark via Brooklyn and Staten Island. Most of the time he would fly over the water. But if he wanted to save a few seconds of flight time, he could fly directly to Newark. But in that case, he would have to cross Manhattan.
Barden reluctantly gave the B-25 a clear path to Newark, but warned Smith to turn around and land at La Guardia in bad weather. Air traffic control also gave him a final warning about the fog: “We can’t even see the tip of the Empire State Building from here.”
It was 9.48am in Manhattan when Stanley Lomax, a sports reporter for WOR radio, was sitting in his car when he heard the noise of an aircraft engine directly above him. Then he saw a B-25 in low flight over the rooftops. “Climb up, you fool, climb up!” he shouted.
Like him, hundreds of other people reacted to the plane, which suddenly appeared out of the fog, flying apparently too low, and crashed into the skyscrapers. In fact, civil law did not set any rules on how to fly over densely populated areas. Only a minimum height of 300 metres had to be observed. In addition, there was a rule that one had to fly so high over a city that in the event of sudden engine failure, one could still glide and reach an uninhabited area or body of water. For Manhattan, a minimum altitude of 600 metres was prescribed, but this rule officially applied only to civil aircraft, while military pilots were merely “advised” to observe this altitude.
Hundreds of eyewitnesses later gave completely contradictory statements. Nevertheless, the last seconds of a B-25 flight can be described quite accurately. Most witnesses saw the plane only when it emerged from the fog north of 42nd Street, flying from the direction of the East River. Smith was then flying toward the city at less than 300 feet altitude in a 15 degree turn. The bomber was caught in the fog between the skyscrapers like a fly in a spider’s web.
Smith, who had always performed his combat duties in Europe with distinction, was clearly not at home in New York. The aircraft was flying south-west at between 200 and 250 miles per hour. Smith was only able to avoid hitting the Grand Central Office Building with a last-second manoeuvre, then continued to wander between skyscrapers, almost crashing into another building on Fifth Avenue.
In the last seconds, a B-25 bomber flew through the city in eerie curves between skyscrapers. In offices, offices, shops and on the streets, people watched with open mouths. Eddie Greenberg, working on the 17th floor of a tall building on 39th Street, watched what was happening very closely. Sixty feet above his head, he saw a bomber, then heard a loud explosion and shouted, “Oh my God, it’s hit the Empire State Building!”
This was not just because the Empire State Building was the pride of America. It stood on the site of an early 18th-century farm, which was later bought by the Astor family, who built a hotel there, which operated until 1920. Then the hotel was demolished, and the first plans for a bigger building began to emerge. Construction of the skyscraper began in 1929, when a construction pit was dug, and a year later, 3000 workers began building it at a rapid pace. Construction was really fast, with the skyscraper rising four and a half storeys every week. Work was completed in April 1931, and a month later it was inaugurated by US President Herbert Hoover.
350 guests were invited to the opening, which was followed by a sumptuous lunch, but the oldest tenant of the premises, one Brod, later recalled that there were only a modest 20 tenants in the skyscraper at the time. Nevertheless, most of the lights in the skyscraper were always on to give the impression that the premises were almost fully occupied. The owners of the Empire State Building did not make a profit on the skyscraper for many years, the first of which was not until 1950.
At 9.49, Pilot Smith probably did not have enough time to realise what had emerged from the fog just in front of his aircraft. What message his brain was sending him at the time, we will never know. Eleven minutes before 10, an 11-tonne bomber, travelling at least 200 miles per hour, crashed into the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors. The plane crashed into the north façade of the building at the level of the elevator shafts, 280 metres above 34th Street, and made a five-and-a-half-metre hole in the building on impact. The two load-bearing facades of the building were blown apart on impact and scattered like bombs around the skyscraper.
The fuselage of the plane – or rather, what was left of it – plunged 25 metres diagonally into the storey like a large missile, damaging the south façade opposite. Debris, glass and one of the two engines fell on 33rd Street. The impact of the bomber on the building was so severe that the steel support column on the 79th floor buckled by half a metre.
An explosion follows the plane’s impact with the Empire State Building. Three hundred litres of jet fuel poured into the offices on the 78th floor, spilling high over the north façade to the observation deck on the 86th floor. The building’s massive structure rocked back and forth twice. Its tip still shone through the fog like a huge red torch, and then the top third of the skyscraper disappeared in thick black smoke. The burning fuel poured like a flood down the 78th floor and then up the stairs to the 75th floor. Everything that could burn disappeared in flames.
Pilot William Smith, co-pilot Dimitrovich and passenger Perma had no chance of survival. If they did not die immediately on impact, they disappeared in a fiery inferno. Two of them – probably Smith and Dimitrovich – were thrown from the plane on impact. Their bodies were later found by rescue teams on the 79th floor.
Fiery Hell
On this floor on Saturday, employees of NCWC, one of the Catholic charities that organised aid for the countries of Europe affected by the Second World War, were sitting in a meeting room. Unlike hundreds of other people in Manhattan, these employees neither saw nor heard the bombers coming until the fiery inferno reached them. There were about 20 people on the NCWC premises that day. Six girls died instantly at the desks where they were working as their rooms were immediately engulfed in fire, others were killed on the stairs as they tried to escape. Only three women escaped for a while, taking refuge in a small office on the south side. In desperation, they broke the windows to get some air, and then the fire reached them and killed them.
Paul Diering, NCWC’s Director of Public Affairs, has met a different death. His body was later found in a small hood on the 72nd floor. The Empire State Building is wider up to this floor than the last third of the building. This hood protected him from a 300-metre fall, but not from a fall seven floors below. Maybe the explosion threw him out of the window, or maybe he jumped in panic as the fire approached. The fact that he died seven floors below kept his body from being recognised. He was the first victim that the police were able to identify immediately.
By the time 37-year-old Catherine O’ Connor recovered from the shock, most of the NCWC premises were in flames. She looked around and saw her colleague Joseph Fountain. His suit was already on fire, but he was still on his feet. “Come Joe, come Joe!” she called to him. He managed to put out his suit and he and two other women took refuge in a small office on the south side. The thick smoke prevented them from going any further. Joe, in particular, was still barely able to stand because of the burns. They all began to pray.
Everyone else who was between the 75th and 102nd floors at 9.49 was also in life-threatening danger. But they had more time to save themselves than the NCWC staff, even though many did not even know what had happened. One man, who had lived in China for 35 years, was convinced that they had experienced an earthquake, because he was familiar with these feelings from having experienced several of them there. Others thought they had been attacked by kamikazes in a desperate attempt to change the course of the war.
But there were also terrible scenes in and around the lifts. The B-25’s second engine and parts of the landing gear ploughed into shaft 7, ripping empty cabins off their hinges and sending the whole thing plummeting 300 metres into the air and landing in the basement of a skyscraper.
Twenty-year-old lift attendant Betty Lou Oliver stopped her lift on the south side of the skyscraper on the 75th floor and opened the door when flaming jet fuel burst through the shaft from above and into the car. At the same time, the force of the explosion threw the girl out of the lift and into the corridor. There, two Air Cargo Aviation employees found her, burnt, bleeding and hysterical. They brought her to their office and gave her first aid. They tried to get the badly injured girl to hospital.
They headed towards the badly damaged lift No 6, which was operated by a girl who was shaken but not injured. As they were about to enter, the employees were stopped by their boss, who advised them that only Betty and her colleague should take the lift. So only the girl who was operating the lift and Betty got into lift 6. The two men had not taken a few steps when they heard the lift doors close and the lift start to fall at high speed towards the basement. The damaged cable of lift 6 broke and the lift plunged 275 metres down with the two unfortunate girls, right to the basement of the skyscraper. Huge rubber dampers mounted at the bottom of the shaft punctured the floor of the car and the falling cable tore the roof of the lift.
At 9.49, five lifts between the 66th and 102nd floors were in operation, but there were hardly any passengers. The cabins that had not collapsed into the depths were stuck in shafts and some were raining burning jet fuel. Abe Gluck, a 36-year-old elevator operator, was standing outside an 80th-floor cabin with Sam Watkinson, a ticket checker, when the plane crashed into the skyscraper. They heard an explosion and thought it was lightning or something had happened in the engine room. They had no time to think further as a wave of fire was approaching them and they quickly rushed down the stairs.
Watkinson, 69, was slower than Gluck and the flames caught up with him. Gluck heard him screaming, came back and pulled him out of the flames. They ran into an empty office and Watkinson collapsed there. His friend dragged him to the window as thick smoke began to fill the room. Gluck then wandered in the thick smoke until he found a staircase. He went back, put the unconscious Watkinson on his shoulders and carried him a few floors down, where some of the lifts were still working. He got off on the 5th floor and found the doctor there. Only then did he notice something sticky on his legs; it was his blood.
Lieutenant Allen Aiman on the 102nd floor had little chance of survival. He was staring at a grey, foggy wall and suddenly noticed a B-25 crashing into the skyscraper a few floors below him. Then he heard an explosion and felt the skyscraper shake. This sobered him and he and his wife quickly retreated to a safer part of the building.
Amazing things were happening in the glazed part of the observation deck on the 86th floor. The explosion sprayed burning jet fuel right up to this floor and metal parts of the B-25 were thrown up from the 79th floor onto the observation deck. Soon, thick smoke, flames and a large cloud of dust from the lift shafts penetrated. Three observation deck guards broke open the door leading to the gallery, which was closed due to bad weather, to allow fresh air to enter. In the excitement, no one could find the key to open the door.
To the sounds of the waltz
Nevertheless, nobody panicked on the observation deck, as pleasant music was still coming from the speakers. The guards asked the few visitors to take the stairs to safety and they began to retreat to the sounds of the Viennese waltz. But there was no music in the Caterpillar Tractor Company premises on the 80th floor. A. Palmer and D. Norden were absorbed in their work and realised a little late that something had happened. Palmer was sitting at his desk when the plane he had neither seen nor heard hit the skyscraper a few metres below him.
The shock wave threw him and the table high towards the ceiling, and he saw flames. “It’s a Japanese bomb,” he immediately thought, but he smelled aviation fuel and knew immediately what had happened. He ran to the window but could see nothing because of the flames and smoke. At that moment, the girl who was operating the lift ran into his office. She had burns on her arms and legs and wanted to jump out of the window in panic. Palmer and Norden prevented her from doing so and tried to calm her down.
Palmer stepped out into the corridor, but was driven back into the office by the thick smoke billowing from the lift shafts. The three of them sat trapped, not knowing what to do. To get some fresh air, they opened one of the windows. They also found a larger hammer, used it to make a hole in the wall to the adjacent office and crawled through it into another room, first Norden and then the two of them pushed the still injured girl through. Palmer was the last to crawl through the opening. From this office they were able to reach the stairs, which were not yet engulfed by fire, and descend thirty floors below, where they encountered rescue teams.
The time was already 9.52. Hundreds of people on the street saw the disaster and it took only a few seconds to alert the police and the fire brigade. The first fire alarm sounded at 9.52, triggered by a firefighter. Fire Lieutenant William Murphy, who was walking along the street, did not see the bomber, but he heard the explosion and saw smoke rising from the building. He hurried to the fire alarm. Seconds later, another alarm was received at the fire control centre, this time from the Empire State Building itself.
William Sharp, a construction worker, was repairing something on the 73rd floor when a B-25 bomber crashed into a skyscraper. The force of the explosion threw him against the wall. Struggling to get to his feet, he grabbed a shovel and hit a glass fire alarm box attached to the wall.
The assistant manager of Raytheon Manufactoring Company on the 53rd floor of the adjacent Lincoln Building had problems informing La Guardia Airport security. While his colleagues were looking out of the window to see what was going on, he ran to the phone and called La Guardia Airport. A staff member at the airport switchboard took his message that a plane had crashed into the Empire State Building as a bad joke. Only after repeatedly claiming that there had been an accident did he take the message seriously. The assistant also informed Mitchell Field Air Traffic Control and the Military Sealift Command Eastern Seaboard. He was the first to inform the three important services responsible for the safety of citizens.
Forty-one fire engines of the 23rd Fire Brigade immediately rushed to the Empire State Building. They arrived at the scene at around ten o’clock. Fire Chief Commissioner Patrick Walsh and his men were faced with the daunting task of putting out the largest fire ever to break out in a building. The previous record, which has never been broken, was extinguishing a fire on the 40th floor of the Sherry-Netherlands Hotel in Manhattan, where in 1927 a fire engulfed the upper floors of the hotel.
Walsh sent most of his men into the flames, which were raging 280 metres above the ground. He ordered the others to go to the basement of the skyscraper, where the wreckage of elevator cabins 6 and 7 and some of the wreckage of the plane lay. Small fires had already started in some areas of the basement due to spilled aviation fuel. The firefighters’ job was initially easier than they thought. They were able to take the lift to the 60th floor. But then the trouble started. There were 18 more floors full of smoke to climb, laden with heavy firefighting equipment and protective masks, to get away from the flames in the first place.
Fortunately, even on these damaged floors, the main water supply was intact. None of the 100 kilometres of main water pipes were destroyed. The firefighters were able to connect their extinguishers and start the water fire. But worse than the fire was the thick smoke. Despite the use of breathing masks, some firefighters soon collapsed and had to be taken away.
The first doctors from Bellevue Hospital also arrived on the scene and began to care for the injured. Priests also helped to rescue them. Some came from nearby churches, others were members of NCWC who rescued themselves and rushed down, then returned with the rescuers. They were giving the sacraments to the badly burned, to those they had spoken to only a few minutes before. As the rescuers made their way along the dangerous path to the site where the B-25 bomber had crashed into the skyscraper, they repeatedly encountered victims of the disaster. The charred corpses of strangers reminded them of the war in Europe that had barely ended. Sometimes, however, it was just a happy ending.
Harold J. Smith, 26, was sitting in his office on the 62nd floor at the time of the accident. He hurried to the window and looked up to see three women leaning heavily out of the window, waving in despair, trapped by the fire and smoke. He rushed to the stairs and found a fire brigade. He led the firefighters to where he thought he saw the three women. He was lucky and did indeed lead them to them and one man who was already suffocating. They were rescued.
Betty is rescued
While rescue teams fought their way through the rubble, 25 doctors, 24 nurses, 13 ambulance technicians and 15 members of the Red Cross were on the lower floors and in the streets, tending to those who had flown out of the Empire State Building. Fifteen ambulances also arrived on the scene and began transporting the injured to the nearest hospital. 400 police officers ensured order and the smooth operation of the ambulances, as well as the dispersal of the curious onlookers who had started to gather. A few blocks from the skyscraper, on the corner of 34th Street, right next to the Saks department store, groups of people began to gather to get a better view of the burning of the most famous building in New York.
Rescuers have organised a temporary hospital in the lobby of the skyscraper. Some of the victims suffered from smoke poisoning, but mainly from burns, fractures and cuts. Many were in shock, just staring, unable to get a word out. Others collapsed from exhaustion, having rushed to the upper floors several times to rescue those who could not save themselves. They had to walk – or rather run – up 70 or 80 floors. There are 1860 steps from the top of the skyscraper on the 102nd floor to the ground.
The rescuers, as well as those who escaped without major injuries, were very grateful for the help provided by the New York Red Cross. Just minutes after the first alarm, two of their kitchen vehicles had already arrived at the skyscraper from the nearby Red Cross headquarters and started distributing 230 litres of hot coffee and sandwiches.
New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia had just arrived outside City Hall when he was informed of the first alarm. He cancelled all appointments for the day and ordered the driver to take him to the scene. Shortly afterwards, he had climbed to the 60th floor through a flood of dirty water and billows of smoke. He reached the 79th floor and watched the fire being extinguished. Although it was “hot as an oven”, as he later recalled, he stayed there for the whole 90 minutes.
When he was told that a plane had crashed into the skyscraper, he shook his head angrily and shouted so loudly that even the firefighters turned round: “I told them over and over again not to fly over the city!” It was clear to him that the pilot of the plane was to blame for the accident. He was only later informed about the most self-sacrificing rescues, and he honoured some of the rescuers and took photographs with them.
Donald Malony was only 17 years old. He was from Detroit and had only been working as a corpsman for eight months with the Connecticut Coast Guard. He had the day off that Saturday and was standing in front of the Empire State Building when the accident happened. He jumped into the shelter of a neighbouring building to protect himself from falling debris. He then rushed to the pharmacy on the ground floor of the Empire State Building. “Give me morphine, needles and first aid kit!” he shouted to the clerk. That day, he was wearing a Coast Guard uniform and a Red Cross sign on his jacket, which meant he was a sanitation worker. So the shopkeeper immediately handed him all the first aid equipment he could find.
The firefighters who took him with them had just gone to the basement of the skyscraper, where parts of the crane had fallen. There was the cab of lift No 6, which had fallen into the basement from the 75th floor. Malony was the first to crawl through the hole in the car, as he was the smallest. In fact, no one expected to find survivors inside. But Betty Oliver and her colleague were still alive and conscious, albeit badly injured. Later, technicians found that automatic safety mitigation devices in the shafts had slowed the fall of the lift so much that the girls were able to survive.
In addition, at the moment the lift car started to fall towards the ground, air pressure built up in the shaft under the lift, creating an air cushion and cushioning the fall. Some of the lift’s auxiliary cables had also already fallen to the bottom of the shaft, further cushioning the fall of the car. Malony gave them first aid and then climbed the stairs to the 70th floor, found some of the casualties and carried them down. He also assisted the rescue teams on the 79th floor.
The most famous was his first rescue attempt. As soon as he crawled into the cabin through the hole, Betty Oliver exclaimed, “Thank God the Navy came for us! We’ll be all right now.” Malony later left the Coast Guard and joined the Navy, serving in the Korean War, where he was wounded eight times. He died in 2002.
After 40 minutes, the fire chief was able to send most of his men home. The fire was extinguished and the smoke from the water-soaked upper floors gradually disappeared. A few firefighters still had to rescue people trapped in the lifts, which had stopped when the explosion occurred, but even this was done within half an hour. They started to inspect the destroyed floors, removing smoking objects and identifying charred bodies.
No one knew exactly how many people were on the 78th and 79th floors at the time of the accident, how many were rescued and how many were not. Some of the bodies were so charred that they could not even tell which sex they were. One fireman found part of a propeller buried deep in the wall, another a piece of cloth with a note saying “Do not remove from aircraft No 0588”.
At 10:00 a.m., David H. Joseph, editor of the New York Times and responsible for all the reports of the famous newspaper, was sitting in the Times Building in New York. Suddenly, he was startled by a powerful explosion in Manhattan. He did not have to wait long to find out what had happened. The employees in the south-side telephone exchange on the 11th floor of the Times Building had a perfect view of the Empire State Building. They hurried down and told the editor what they had seen. Editor Joseph knew he had to change the front page of the Sunday edition immediately. It was supposed to cover the events on the Pacific front and the Senate ratification of the UN Charter, but now the Empire State Building had to take its place.
Frank S. Adams was one of the paper’s best reporters, but he had the day off. His editor called him on the phone in Queens and told him to write an editorial, quite a long one, on the Empire State Building. Adams’s colleagues were also given their own assignments: one reporter was to interview people who were in the skyscraper at the time of the crash, another was to report on eyewitness testimony who saw the plane hit the skyscraper, another was to rush to the fire and police headquarters and report on what was happening there, the rest were to report from the hospitals on the medical condition of the survivors, and a few were also sent to La Guardia Airport. In all, 25 journalists were assigned to cover the disaster.
So the editor soon had reports on the crash on his desk, photographs and biographies of all those on board, and smaller reports of happy and almost unbelievable coincidences, such as the survival of Betty Oliver and her rescuer Malony.
The Commission has found no answer
Pilot Smith’s telephone conversation with the La Guardia control tower and the last fatal instructions were a story in themselves, as was the detailed report on safety precautions for aircraft flying over populated areas. A journalist reported a conversation with Archbishop Francis Spellman and his prayer for the victims of the earthquake was then printed verbatim in the newspaper. Finally, there was a list of those who had been injured and also of those who had died, as far as could be identified during the night of Saturday and Sunday.
In addition to the texts, the photographs are intended to give readers the best possible picture of what is happening in the skyscraper. Photojournalist Erni Sisto carried his heavy Speed Graphic camera up to the 81st floor, despite the pain caused by a stomach bug. From there he had a view of the hole caused when the plane crashed into the building. He put the lens on the camera. He managed to convince the firefighters to help him perform the crazy manoeuvre. He sat on the window sill, leaned out sharply and looked deep into the air, with firefighters holding his legs. He quickly took some photos. One of them was published on the front page of the newspaper the next day.
Of course, those who had their radios on did not have to wait for the Sunday edition of the New York Times to find out what had happened. A few radio stations had premises near the skyscraper. Edwin P. Kenny, a technician working for WOR, was standing on the roof of the 23rd floor of the tall building to read the weather reports from the weather machine when a B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building. He ran down to the recording studio and reported the crash to the announcer. He immediately interrupted the programme and sent the first report on air – almost simultaneously with the first phone call at 9.49.
The next day, New Yorkers could see the eight-foot black hole in the north façade of the world’s tallest building. Many were surprised that such a powerful impact on the skyscraper had not caused significant structural damage to the building itself. They were also amazed that the fire could be extinguished so quickly and that there were so few fatalities. It was hard to imagine how many people would have died if Pilot Smith had flown on Monday instead of Saturday, when the skyscraper would have been packed.
Nevertheless, the list of dead and injured was extensive. 14 people died, 25 were injured and the damage was only a million dollars, but it was still high compared to the cost of the Empire State Building itself, which in 1931 was less than $25 million. All the damage was paid for by the US Department of Defence.
Many of the wounded were able to leave the hospital soon, most of them late in the day. Betty Oliver remained in hospital for 18 weeks due to severe burns and 18 broken bones. She emerged more or less recovered and, after five months, re-entered the lift at the Empire State Building with a building inspector. She then withdrew from public life and refused to talk about these events any more, as she devoted herself entirely to her family. She died in 1999.
Otis Elevators, the company that installed the elevators, assured that they were completely safe and that the collapse of the cabins was caused solely by the plane hitting the skyscraper. However, firefighters, journalists, technicians, engineers, city and army representatives started investigating the parts of the skyscraper most affected by the accident as early as Saturday. For several hours afterwards, pieces of glass continued to fall on the street below the skyscraper, which was, of course, closed to traffic and inaccessible to pedestrians.
Soon, Hugh Drum, President of the owners and operators of the Empire State Building, was able to announce to the public that the skyscraper had not suffered any serious structural damage. Archbishop Francis Spellman, however, held a funeral mass for those who died in the disaster on Sunday at St Patrick’s Cathedral in front of 1,000 faithful. About the accident previously told, “The gaping wounds in the building are symbolic of the wounds in the hearts of those who have been robbed of their loved ones and in many cases cannot even identify their loved ones.”
But life went on, and on Sunday, just one day after the accident, all the lifts were operational up to the 67th floor. Between the 67th and 80th floors, only five cabins were still in use. The viewing platforms on the 67th and 102nd floors were temporarily closed. The holes in the north and south façades were temporarily covered with tarpaulins and boards. The building was repaired for two months, after which the Empire State Building was as it had been and as if nothing had happened.
Of course, after this accident, regulations were tightened on the construction of skyscrapers to withstand collisions with aircraft. When the terrorists hijacked the B 767 on 11 September 2001 and crashed into the New York Twin Towers, they did not immediately collapse, even though the B 767 is about three times the size of a B-25 bomber. But the damage to the supporting columns caused a fire to break out, as the fireproofing fell off the walls and the high temperatures reduced the strength of the supporting structure, which then could no longer support the weight of the upper floors.
However, it has never been explained exactly how the accident occurred. “If the pilot had stayed where he belonged, we would not have had any problems,” the Mayor of New York said at a press conference on 29 July. The US Air Force set up a commission to investigate, but it never came to a clear conclusion – only the control tower at La Guardia Airport was blamed for not prohibiting the B-25 bomber from deciding on its own further flight and thus on its fate. It was proven that from the very beginning, when Smith was flying over Manhattan, he had not been flying at the minimum altitude of 600 metres.
But why did it suddenly appear out of the fog in low flight? Could it have been the recklessness of a pilot too bold in war, wanting to prove himself to his fellow pilots? Did he want to ‘show’ them New York as others had never seen it, and in his desire to do so he became entangled in a deadly trap among the skyscrapers? Maybe he had a problem with his instruments, which were not pointing correctly, and he only realised his mistake when he saw the wall of the Empire State Building in front of him?
Some eyewitnesses claimed that the pilot had engine problems, which is unlikely as the plane crashed into a skyscraper at a speed of at least 200 mph. One witness even stated that the plane had its landing gear already extended, as if the pilot was trying to reduce airspeed. Others were convinced that Smith had problems with the plane’s elevator.
This could be the cause of the accident. But all witnesses saw the B-25 only seconds before impact, in poor weather conditions, and did not have time to observe it closely. New York would not be New York if some people had not turned the crash into a lucrative business. On 29 July, Edward Blod and two other amateur astronomers, who usually pointed their telescopes at the night sky, set up their telescopes in broad daylight. For a fee, curious onlookers were able to see the shattered facade of the Empire State Building in the early hours of the morning. There were so many curious onlookers that the queue was tens of metres long.
