Airplane collision with the Empire State Building
The plane collision with the Empire State Building was a serious plane crash in 1945 in New York City , USA .
Course of events
prehistory
On July 28, 1945, a Saturday, Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith Jr., a highly decorated pilot in the United States Army Air Forces , was en route from Bedford, Massachusetts to Newark in a twin-engined unarmed B-25 bomber , New Jersey . Smith had taken off from Bedfords Field Aerodrome (north of Boston ) at 8:55 a.m. From Newark the flight was supposed to continue to the home base in South Dakota . There were two passengers on the plane. Smith had flown 50 combat missions with the Boeing B-17 . But it was only the second time that he flew the much smaller and faster B-25 Mitchell. In the B-17, the commander and copilot could rely on a navigator . Not so with the B-25: in the numerically much smaller crew, the pilots themselves were responsible for the navigation. William Smith had earned a reputation as a daredevil who was used to asserting himself. At age 27, he was one of the youngest Lieutenant Colonels in the USAAF .
Smith had flown some Army officers to New York's Newark Airport the previous evening. Now he had the order to pick her up there again. The weather report for the destination airport reported bad weather, which meant that the aircraft landing there would ask for help during the instrument approach. Experience has shown that such a difficult situation caused further delays. Despite the expected backlog, Smith did not change his flight plan. He arrived in New York at around 9:40 a.m. On the morning of that day, New York City was covered by a thick blanket of fog , which is why air traffic control rerouted the flight to LaGuardia Airport . Smith asked for permission to land at Newark Airport and received it. However, the air traffic controller warned him: “ At the present time, I can't see the top of the Empire State Building. "(German:" At the moment I can't see the top of the Empire State Building. ")
A hit
At 09:40 a.m. local time ( Eastern Standard Time ), the B-25 flew at a speed of around 320 km / h to the 79th floor of what was then the tallest building in the world . According to eyewitness reports, the Empire State Building trembled when the impact occurred. The collision created a five by six meter hole in the facade.
The wings were cut off. One of the two Wright Cyclone engines broke through the building, exited on the opposite side and then destroyed the roof of a neighboring house. The second motor fell down an elevator shaft together with parts of the landing gear. The ignition of the aviation fuel started a fire, which could be extinguished after 40 minutes.
The accident resulted in a total of 14 fatalities: in addition to the three occupants of the machine, another eleven people who had been in the building. 24 people suffered some serious injuries.
Since the Empire State Building suffered no structural damage, it was able to reopen on the following Monday. However, it took three months for all damage to be repaired. The repair cost was approximately one million US dollars ($). Adjusted for inflation, this equates to approximately $ 14.2 million today.
root cause
Today the cause is seen as the fact that the pilot probably lost his orientation in the fog. It is unclear why the experienced bomber pilot Smith did not follow the instructions of the air traffic controller and landed in LaGuardia.
Elevator crash over 300 meters
Betty Lou Oliver, who was burned in the collision, was supposed to take an elevator to the lobby, but the elevator's suspension cables were damaged and she fell 75 floors (more than 300 meters). She survived the crash and received an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the highest survived fall by elevator. Parts of the damaged elevator and the strongly compressed air in the narrow elevator shaft slowed the fall sufficiently.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Mike Sharpe: The greatest airplane disasters. Gondrom Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-8112-1670-8 , p. 46 ff.
- ↑ This figure was based on the template: Inflation determined, has been rounded to the nearest $ 100,000 and refers to the previous calendar year at most
- ↑ Longest Fall Survived In An Elevator . ( Memento from February 20, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) (english)