The Day A Mitchell B-25 Medium Bomber Careened Into The Empire State Building.
Published in
2 min readJul 25, 2011
It was a foggy day in New York City on a Saturday morning, July 28th, 1945. Clouds festooned skyscrapers over the island in thick layers. Although it was a Saturday, a new six-day workweek brought on by the World War helped appoint many offices with plenty of employees. Catherine O’Connor of the National Catholic Welfare Conference took the elevator to the 79th floor and started working.
In the air above the clouds was Lt. Colonel William Smith piloting a U.S. Army B-25 bomber over Manhattan on his way to Newark where he was tasked with picking up his commanding officer. He dropped out of the thick clouds to increase his visibility and found himself flying amidst skyscrapers. In an an unfortunate series of evasive maneuvers he collided with the 79thfloor of the Empire state building. The massive ten ton armored bomber ploughed into the building gouging out a 20 foot high hole. Spinning turbines and propellers ripped into walls and shredded furniture. Several thousand pounds of fuel ignited. One of the Wright R-2600 Cyclone 14 engines unhinged and plunged all the way through the other side of the building and cartwheeled into the top of a building across the street. The other radial engine bounced into an elevator shaft. To people in the elevator it felt as if it plummeted, but safety devices slowed it down and two ladies in the car escaped unscathed.
.Fourteen were killed, 26 were wounded. I find the sight of this early crash of a bomber into the Empire State Building to be creepy. I guess there is an obvious reason why. It just still seems odd to see something this big not bring a building down, not cause a state lock down, and not cause a raft of conspiracy theories.
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Mitchell B-25 Bomber
Source: Wikipedia
Tagged as: B-25, Empire State Building, Lt. Colonel Willism Smith
Originally published at civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com on July 25, 2011.
