B-25 Bomber Crashes into the Empire State Building (1945)

July 28, 1945

On the foggy morning of July 28, 1945, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell bomber slammed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City, killing 14 people and injuring 26 others. The crash, caused by a wartime pilot losing his bearings in thick cloud cover over Manhattan, remains one of the most dramatic accidental disasters in American aviation history and a startling instance of a warplane striking a civilian skyscraper on U.S. soil.

The Flight and the Crash

Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith Jr., a decorated combat pilot, was flying a North American B-25 Mitchell bomber from Bedford, Massachusetts, to Newark, New Jersey, on the morning of July 28, 1945. Dense fog blanketed New York City, reducing visibility to just a few hundred feet, yet Smith pressed on toward LaGuardia Field despite warnings from air traffic controllers to divert. Disoriented amid the fog and skyscrapers, Smith banked the twin-engine bomber sharply near 42nd Street, attempting to avoid buildings looming out of the mist. At approximately 9:40 a.m., the aircraft, traveling roughly 200 miles per hour, crashed directly into the north face of the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors. The impact tore a gaping hole roughly 18 feet wide and 20 feet high into the limestone facade. One engine, still burning, shot through the building and out the opposite side, landing on a nearby rooftop, while the plane's fuel ignited a fire that spread through several floors, filling offices with flames and thick smoke.

Casualties and Heroism

The crash killed all three crew members aboard the B-25, including Smith, and 11 people working inside the building, most of them employees of the War Relief Services offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council on the 79th floor. Twenty-six others suffered injuries from the fire, debris, and falling wreckage. Because the accident occurred on a Saturday, the building was far less occupied than on a typical weekday, which undoubtedly limited the death toll. Amid the chaos, elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a horrifying fall when the cables of her elevator car, severed by the crash, gave way and she plunged 75 stories to the basement. Remarkably, she survived, and her fall remains recognized by Guinness World Records as the longest survived elevator drop in history. Firefighters battled the blaze for approximately 40 minutes before extinguishing it, and building engineers quickly determined that the Empire State Building's steel-frame structure had held firm, preventing a catastrophic structural collapse.

Aftermath and the B-25's Legacy

The Empire State Building reopened to the public just two days later, on July 30, 1945, a testament to the sturdiness of its construction and the resolve of the city recovering from World War II, which had ended in Europe only months earlier and would end in the Pacific weeks later. The accident spurred discussions about aviation safety in urban airspace and later influenced building codes and elevator safety mechanisms nationwide. The aircraft involved, the North American B-25 Mitchell, had entered service in 1941 and was named for Brigadier General William 'Billy' Mitchell, an early advocate of American military airpower. Nearly 10,000 B-25s were built during the war, making it the most-produced American medium bomber, serving in every theater of World War II from the Pacific to Europe. Variants included the F-10 reconnaissance model, the AT-24 trainer, and the Marine Corps' PBJ-1 patrol bomber. Many B-25s remained in active or reserve service for decades after the war ended, a testament to the aircraft's rugged design. The Empire State Building crash stands as a haunting reminder of how a reliable wartime workhorse could, through tragic circumstance, become the center of a peacetime disaster.