The B Twenty-Five That Hit the Empire State Building, the Fog Over Manhattan on July Twenty-Eighth, Nineteen Forty-Five, and Betty Lou Oliver, the Woman Who Fell Seventy-Five Stories and Lived

On the foggy morning of Saturday, July 28, 1945, a U.S. Army B-25 Mitchell bomber flew into the north face of the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors, roughly 913 feet above the street. Fourteen people died, but the day also produced one of the most astonishing survival stories in history: elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver fell 75 stories in a plunging elevator car and lived. The disaster helped push the United States toward the modern air traffic control system we fly under today.

What happened when the B-25 hit the Empire State Building

The war in Europe was over and Japan was weeks from surrender when a North American B-25 Mitchell flew inbound toward the New York area that Saturday morning. The Mitchell was a twin-engine medium bomber with two big Wright radial engines, a twin tail, and a hard-earned reputation for toughness - this was the same type Jimmy Doolittle launched off a carrier deck to bomb Tokyo in 1942, sixteen bombers flying a mission nobody thought possible.

At the controls was Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith, Jr., a decorated combat veteran and West Point graduate who had flown missions over Europe. He was ferrying the bomber from Bedford, Massachusetts, to Newark, New Jersey, to pick up his commanding officer - a routine hop.

The weather was the problem. Thick fog had settled over the entire region, low enough that the tops of the tallest buildings vanished into the cloud.

Why the pilot kept flying in the fog

When Smith checked in, controllers at LaGuardia gave him a stark warning: from where he sat, he could not even see the top of the Empire State Building. The tallest structure in the city was already swallowed by the fog.

Under the rules of the day, a military pilot flying under visual flight rules could make the call himself. Smith requested clearance to continue to Newark and pressed on. He dropped low, trying to stay beneath the fog and keep the ground in sight - the oldest instinct in aviation.

But Manhattan is not open country. It is a canyon of skyscrapers. Disoriented and hunting for the ground, Smith brought the bomber down low over Midtown. Witnesses on 42nd Street heard the engines first, then watched a bomber emerge from the cloud, weaving between towers and appearing to bank hard as if trying to climb back out.

How much damage the crash caused

At about 9:40 a.m., the B-25 struck the building. The impact tore a hole in the limestone-and-steel wall roughly 18 feet wide and 20 feet tall. Ten tons of aircraft moving around 200 miles per hour, loaded with aviation fuel, hit the tower nearly a thousand feet in the air.

One engine ripped clean off the wing, punched all the way through the building, and fell onto the roof of a smaller building across the street, starting a fire. The other engine and part of the landing gear plunged down an elevator shaft.

The worst of it was the gasoline. Burning fuel washed through the 79th floor, where the National Catholic Welfare Council, a Catholic war relief organization, had staff working that Saturday. On a normal weekday the floor would have been packed; because it was a wartime Saturday, most offices sat empty.

Fourteen people died: eleven in the building and three aboard the aircraft, including Colonel Smith. It remains the deadliest accidental aircraft strike on a skyscraper in American history before September 11, 2001.

Who was Betty Lou Oliver and how did she survive a 75-story fall

Betty Lou Oliver was 20 years old and worked as an elevator operator in the building. When the bomber hit, she was on the 80th floor, just above the impact. The blast burned and injured her, and rescuers placed her in an elevator car to bring her down to the street for help.

What no one knew was that the crash had damaged and weakened the elevator cables. Near the 75th floor, the cables gave way, and the car dropped - 75 stories, more than a thousand feet, in free fall to the bottom of the shaft.

Betty Lou Oliver survived. To this day her fall stands in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest survived fall in an elevator.

Two quirks of physics saved her. As the car fell, the severed cables piled into a coiled heap beneath it, cushioning the impact. Engineers also point to the air itself: the falling car compressed the air trapped in the narrow shaft, and that pocket of pressurized air acted like a piston and an air brake, softening the blow.

Rescuers had to cut through the wrecked car to reach her. She was badly broken and burned, but alive. Betty Lou Oliver recovered, lived a long life, and died in the late 1990s.

Why this accident still matters to pilots

This crash, and others like it in those years, helped push the country toward a modern air traffic control system. The idea that a pilot could unilaterally decide to press into instrument conditions over the most crowded city in America began to look like exactly the thing that needed rules. Within a few years, the machinery that became the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was taking real shape, tightening how aircraft are separated from each other and from the ground - especially in weather.

There is also a lesson closer to the cockpit. The temptation to duck under the weather and scud-run, staying low to keep the ground in sight, has killed more good pilots than almost anything else. Smith was better than most, and the fog did not care. When the tops of the buildings are in the clouds, the choice is to stay on the ground or fly a proper instrument approach - there is no third option.

Key Takeaways

On July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber flew into the Empire State Building in heavy fog, striking between the 78th and 79th floors at about 9:40 a.m.
The crash killed 14 people - 11 in the building and 3 aboard the aircraft, including pilot Lt. Col. William F. Smith, Jr.
Betty Lou Oliver, 20, survived a 75-story elevator free fall, cushioned by coiled cables and compressed air - a Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall.
The disaster helped accelerate the creation of the modern U.S. air traffic control system and the FAA.
The enduring pilot lesson: scud-running under low weather is a killer; when buildings disappear into cloud, stay grounded or fly the instrument approach.