Current Date: 08 Aug, 2025
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Remembering the 1945 Empire State Building Disaster: When a Plane Met Skyscraper

An airplane crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945. Among other damage, plane parts severed the cables of an elevator and the woman inside fell over 70 stories. She lived and holds the world record for the longest survived elevator fall.

On July 28, 1945, a US military aircraft crashes into the Empire State Building, killing fourteen people. Thick fog was the cause of the bizarre mishap.

Two pilots and a passenger were on board the B-25 Mitchell bomber, which was traveling from Bedford, Massachusetts, to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. The fog was especially thick that Saturday morning as it entered the metropolis. Instead, the plane was told to fly to Newark Airport by air traffic controllers.

The crew was particularly alerted that the Empire State Building, the city’s tallest structure at the time, was not visible when the aircraft used this revised flight plan, which took it over Manhattan. When the bomber passed over the Chrysler Building in midtown, it was traveling quite slowly and low in an attempt to get better visibility. It veered to avoid the structure, but the action sent it straight into the Empire State Building’s north side, close to the 79th floor.

This hole in the Empire State building between the 78th and 79th floor is where an Army B-25 bomber crashed into the north wall on July 28, 1945 in New York. Florida Times-Union

The plane’s fuel burst upon impact, shooting flames out of the hole it had torn open in the building’s side and engulfing the entire interior of the structure down to the 75th floor. One of the plane’s engines crashed through the structure and came to rest in a penthouse apartment across the street. Additional aircraft parts became lodged in and above surrounding structures. While at least one woman was inside the elevator car, the other engine broke an elevator cable. The engine tumbled down the shaft and landed on top of the emergency auto brake, which prevented the woman from plummeting to the bottom. She was saved from certain death when quick-thinking rescuers extracted her from the elevator.

There weren’t as many employees in the building as usual because it was a Saturday. There were only 11 fatalities in the building; some died from burns from the flaming fuel, and others died after being ejected. The eleven victims were all employees of the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s War Relief Services division, whose offices the plane had crashed into. In addition, all three occupants of the aircraft perished.

The gaping hole, circled, at the 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building in New York, marks the place where the B-25 army bomber crashed into the structure, killing at least 13 people. This photo was made July 29, after the dense fog that helped cause the crash dissipated. Florida Times-Union

There was a void in the side of the Empire State Building measuring eighteen by twenty feet. The crash did cause nearly $1 million in damages, or about $10.5 million in today’s money, even though its structural integrity was unaffected.

This was this scene after an Army B-25 bomber crashed into the 78th and 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945 in New York. Florida Times-Union
A military policeman, left, guards the wreckage of a B-25 Bomber after the low-flying plane crashed through the north wall of the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City, July 28, 1945. Other officials and workmen are seen in the background. Florida Times-Union
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