B-25 Crashed into the Empire State Building and Exploded

1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber, flying in heavy fog, crashed into the Empire State Building killing 14 people.

The accident did not compromise the building's structural integrity.The damage estimated at $1,000,000 ($13,593,346 in 2017 dollars).

It was  July 28, 1945, which was a Saturday.

The sky was thick with fog.

Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith Jr. was piloting the aircraft from Bedford Army Air Field to Newar on a routine trip he has made many times before.

He asked permission to land, but was advised against it because the visibility was zero.

He proceeded anyway.

He became hopelessly disoriented, and turned the opposite way he was supposed to, passed the Chrysler Building.

9:40 a.m., the aircraft crashed between the 78th and 80th floors.

This carved a 18-by-20-foot hole in the North side of the building.

The offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council were located there.

One engine rocketed through the opposite side of the building and flew as far as the next block before dropping 900 feet.

Then it landed on the roof of a nearby building starting a fire that destroyed a penthouse art studio. 

The other engine and part of the landing gear plummeted down an elevator shaft and caused a fire that was extinguished in 40 minutes.

Fourteen people were killed in this tragedy.

Smith was thrown through the elevator shaft and fell to the bottom.

He wasn't found until two days later when search crews discovered  his body.

Along with Smith, two enlisted men aboard the bomber (Staff Sergeant Christopher Domitrovich and Albert Perna, a Navy Aviation Machinist's Mate, and eleven people in the building, all lost their lives.

Betty Lou Oliver was operating the elevator, when the cables supporting her elevator broke and the elevator fell 75 stories, ending up in the basement. 

She was found among the rubble alive and a record holder for the Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator fall.

Her record still stands to this day.
Betty Lou Oliver Tells What it was Like

Astonishingly, the building was open for business on the following Monday.

The crash motivated the passage of the long-pending Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, as well as the  allowing people to sue the government for the accident.