1945 Empire State Building plane crash

Today is the 68th anniversary of when a B-25 Mitchell bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City. Unlike the attacks of September 11th 2001, this plane crash was entirely accidental: the plane's pilot, Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith, Jr., had been flying from Bedford Army Air Field to La Guardia Airport; however, when Smith came in range of La Guardia, he asked for a weather report in Newark and opted to land there. Smith was advised that there was zero visibility, but he continued regardless; when he flew over Manhattan, the fog disoriented him, causing him to make an incorrect turn near the Chrysler Building.

That wrong turn led him, his plane and his crew into the Empire State Building; the aircraft struck the 79th floor on the north side of the skyscraper. While the overall structural integrity of the Empire State Building remained intact, the crash killed 14 people, including Smith and his two other crewmen, and started a fire that took well over half an hour to extinguish; the fire was the highest in the city's history until September 11th, 2001, but retains the record of being the highest building fire to be controlled. Despite the deaths and the damage inflicted upon the Empire State Building, the tower was open again two days later; the cost of the repairs was around $1,000,000, which is estimated at $13,000,000 by today's standards.

Betty Lou Oliver was the other notable person of the day. She had been working on the 80th floor when the building was struck; she received burns but she survived. When rescue units arrived at her location, they decided to send her back down the building via an elevator; however, the crash had weakened the cable, and when the doors closed the elevator fell. Oliver was fortunate a second time, as rapid compression of air in the shaft slowed the elevator's descent and the thousand feet of elevator cable that had fallen to the bottom cushioned the landing. To this day, Oliver holds the record for the highest-survived elevator fall.

Sadly, the accident is often overshadowed by 9/11; worse yet, it's cited by some conspiracy theorists attempting to rationalize their opinions about 9/11. They often argue that, because the Empire State Building, a structure from the early 1930s, survived a plane crash, then the World Trade Center towers should easily have survived, too. They forget that the Empire State Building was hit by a small and slow aircraft compared to the jets that hit the Twin Towers; the Twin Towers also had a radically different structural design to the Empire State Building. Beyond planes crashing into skyscrapers in New York City, the two incidents are hardly comparable. Even today, I read an informative article about the accident, but I mistakely read the comments section, which was brimming with trolling.

The events that transpired on July 28th, 1945, in New York City mustn't be forgotten; they might not have been as deadly or as destructive as 9/11, but they were a tragedy, all the same.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-25_Empire_State_Building_crash

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Lou_Oliver

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/28/nyregion/flaming-horror-79th-floor-50-years-ago-today-fog-plane-hit-world-s-tallest.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92987873

http://web.archive.org/web/20060317041607/http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/content_pages/record.asp?recordid=53746