Flash: PLANE CRASHES INTO EMPIRE STATE BUILDING (7-28-45)

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 28, 1945)

B-25 hits Empire State; at least 13 die in building

Army pilot lost in fog; upper part becomes a blazing inferno

Billowing smoke and flame pour from the tower of the Empire State Building immediately after it was hit by a low-flying B-25 bomber today. The flames shot 300 feet in the air when the bomber smashed into the tower.

NEW YORK (UP) – A B-25 bomber crashed and exploded in the 78th floor of the Empire State Building today and the upper part of the tallest building in the world instantly became a blazing inferno for hundreds of office workers perched 1,000 feet above the street.

The plane was lost in a fog when it struck. It broke into a giant, spectacular burst of flame. The explosion rocked Midtown Manhattan.

Nearly four hours after the disaster. the death toll was in doubt. A police captain in the building said at 1:30 p.m. that 13 bodies had been found in the structure – 11 on the 79th floor, one on the 78th and one on the 72nd. Earlier, Police Headquarters said 19 had been killed.

Many of the bodies were so mangled that it may be days before the death list is completed. Of the 13 bodies, 12 were unidentified.

Flames raged out of control in six floors of the 102-story building for 40 minutes. Three elevators fell from the 80th floor to the ground. Glass and debris rained into the street.

The plane struck the north side of the building, penetrated a wing of the floor, destroyed everything in its path and went out the south wing of the building. Part of it landed on the roof of the 12-story Waldorf Building on 33rd Street.

Six of the dead were reported to be soldiers, some presumably members of the plane’s crew of five.

Only the fact that it was Saturday morning, when many offices are closed, prevented a far greater disaster.

The 78th floor was unoccupied. On the 79th floor, occupied by offices of the War Relief Service of the National Catholic Welfare Council, several persons were killed.

Nine bodies were reported found on the 79th floor. Three bodies were taken from two of the fallen elevators. The third was empty.

An enormous crowd gathered in the street and the largest amount of firefighting apparatus ever assembled in New York City was rushed out in four fire alarms.

Glass and debris continued to shower down for almost an hour.

Plane wreckage in street following the crash of a B-25 bomber into the side of the Empire State Building. Cpl. Harry A. Berger of the Bronx stands beside the wreckage straining to watch smoke and flames pouring from the giant structure. Base of the building is shown in the background.

The 34th Street foyer of the building was converted into an emergency receiving station.

Bellevue Hospital sent all available doctors, nurses and disaster equipment.

First reporters to fight their way up past the smoke-clouded 69th floor found the cowling of the plane still stuck to the side of the building. The point where the plane struck was near a bank of 10 elevators. All floors from the 69th to the 79th were littered with debris.

About 20 feet inside the window nearest where the plane struck lay one of the B-25s engines and half a propeller. A fragment of a propeller was imbedded in a wall.

Office windows were shattered 10 floors up and 10 floors below the 78th story. A stream of firemen, police, priests, doctors and nurses moved up and down the stairs. Six charred bodies lay in and near the Catholic Welfare offices.

Mayor F. H. LaGuardia, quickly at the scene, inspected the 78th floor and said: “It was just an oven.”

He said the plane was “flying too low.” City regulations forbid flying fewer than 5,000 feet over the city, he said.

Witnesses said the plane zoomed down Fifth Avenue, apparently in trouble.

Nanette Morrison, typist in the office of Carl Byor Associates publicists, was gazing out the window as the plane approached. Not realizing her peril at first, she leaned from the window and started to wave to the crew members, she said.

The Army said the bomber left Bedford, Massachusetts, on “contact flying regulations.” A control tower operator at the field said the ceiling was 1,100 feet over Manhattan at 9:50 a.m., the time of the crash.

The Empire State Building is 1,250 feet tall and on foggy days its peak usually is obscured.

One of the first dead to be identified was Paul Deering, 40, a reporter for The Buffalo Courier-Express. Mr. Deering’s body was recovered from a window ledge on the 72nd floor, and police believed he died trying to escape from an upper floor.

Roofs of several nearby buildings were set afire by the spray of blazing gasoline from the plane.

An enormous throng rushed to the scene and all available firefighting apparatus in the city was called.

Fog, at times closing in to 500 feet of the ground, blotted out the view of fire from the street at times.

Despite the fire, the lower floors of the building were not evacuated and heads could be seen protruding from windows up to the 20th floor.

Army Public Relations officers said the plane was en route from Bedford to LaGuardia Field. It was reported to have attempted to land at LaGuardia and to have turned and headed for Newark when low visibility prevented a landing here.

The first flash of flames swept through seven stories of the building, from the 79th to 86th floors.

Army Lt. Aubrey B. Condit, a pilot, was on the 55th floor of the building when the crash came. He said the plane that struck the tower was a B-25 Billy Mitchell bomber, which carried a crew of three.

Thousands of workers and residents in the Midtown area rushed to windows of surrounding buildings to watch the spectacular fire and the scurry of hundreds of firemen, and white-coated ambulance physicians in the street.

The crash came like a peal of thunder, and many of those who heard it dismissed it as such. The morning had been heavy with humidity and the skies were overcast.

When a mass of flames spewed out from the tower, observers first believed lightning had struck the building. Then reports flashed from the stricken skyscraper that a bomber had rammed the east side of the tower, exploded, and bounced off in flames to the roof of the old Waldorf Building.

At 10:30, the tower was still blazing, and firemen found a large tire from the plane on the Waldorf Building roof.

William Yates, elevator operator in the building, said he saw the plane blown back from the tower after it crashed. Yates was returning to the building from a barber shop.

The pilot was flying by contact with the ground rather than by instrument, although visibility over Manhattan was only about 500 feet.

Police and fire lines were formed several blocks from the building, and pedestrians elbowed and shoved on the edges, trying to force their way closer to the scene.

Ellen Lowe of Floral Park, New York, who works for the Catholic Welfare Council, said:

It was hell on earth. I was typing. Suddenly there was a blast and our whole office burst into flames. This was followed by thick, acrid smoke. We ran to the windows and hung out to get some air. As we did that. we saw smoke pouring out of the 76th floor. We prayed that the wind would divert the smoke and it did. occasionally, but once in a while, great blasts of it would come up to our floor.

A girl elevator operator was blown out of her elevator on the 75th floor and taken to the office of the Air Cargo Transport Corp. for treatment. The skin was literally peeled from her face.

Mayor LaGuardia said the bodies of the plane crew may have been destroyed, mangled or thrown from the building by the tremendous force of the crash.

Office windows were shattered 10 floors above and 10 floors below the 78th story. From the 76th floor up, stairways were a tangled mass of firehose.

Army, Navy and FBI officials rushed to investigate.

[NormanStewart]

Plane pierces skyscraper, wing falls block away

By Stanley Lomax

NEW YORK (UP) – I shouted: “climb fool, climb.”

A second later I saw the plane crash into the Empire State Building with a force that drove the engine and the cockpit into the skyscraper and sent out a tower of flame 100 feet wide and 100 feet high.

I was driving to work when I heard the roar of the plane’s engines. I looked up, and then I knew it would crash. It was an Army plane a B-25, obviously in trouble. Its course was straight down Fifth Avenue, and the pilot must have known when I saw the plane that he would hit the building. He pulled up a little, but not enough, and the plane crashed.

It hit at the 78th floor, where there’s a recess in the building, just below the observation tower. The left wing catapulted up into the fog and then over toward Madison Avenue, one block east.

The plane just hung there for about five minutes. As soon as it struck, with a crash like thunder in a nightmare, the entire floor where it hit burst into the same golden, blinding flames as the plane had done. It was as though someone had thrown a switch.

Then the floor above flamed up within 30 seconds. It was all so quick.

The cockpit of the plane was drive so deep into the building that the pilot and his crew must have been burned to death within an instant.

It was all like a hideous dream, maybe because the fog made it seem unreal. Not more than 100 feet above the plane, the fog hugged the tower and little wisps of it reached down, like they were trying to cover the tragedy.

Then the fire department got there. They must have come within two minutes after the crash. Twenty trucks roared down Fifth Avenue.

Office workers flee

By that time the flames were covering three or four floors, it seemed. Maybe I was wrong.

Maybe the flames or the tears I couldn’t stop made me a little crazy.

The office workers poured out of the Empire State Building, as many as could escape I’ve never seen such frightened people. I knew what they were thinking. I’d thought about it myself, plenty of times.

What if a bomb ever hit the Empire State? Well, now I know.

[NormanStewart]

Plane blast blows girl from elevator, across hall

‘Not surprised at crash,’ declares eyewitness on 75th floor
By James W. Irwin

The author of the following dispatch is president of the James W. Irwin Co. management consultants.

NEW YORK (UP) – At about 10 a.m. today I was sitting alone in my office on the 75th floor of the Empire State Building.

Outside the windows there was a dense fog.

The roar of airplanes going overhead is a familiar sound to those of us who have offices in this giant structure.

But this morning I heard one coming that seemed to be headed right my way.

I ran into the hall as the roar increased. Just as I hit the hall the plane struck.

Blows girl across hall

A girl elevator operator had just opened the door of the elevator shaft on my floor. The blast blew her all the way across the hall.

She is in the next office as I dictate this to the United Press. No first aid has reached us as yet. We are isolated.

There are at least 11 other casualties on this floor alone, mostly women, some of them badly burned.

I am told that the plane struck the building several floors above my office. That would be hard to tell from here. The halls are still so full of fumes that we are afraid to use the stairs.

Not surprised at crash

The screaming and general hubbub up here is so terrific that I can hardly hear over the telephone, but now things are quieting down.

All of my windows are gone and the hallways are littered with glass.

I don’t want to claim too much, but I must say that I am not too surprised at what has happened. We hear these planes all the time and frequently they sound like they are coming awfully close.

Fortunately the building was not too full of tenants this morning because so many people take Saturday off. I don’t know what happened to the people on the floor where the plane struck.

Office shattered

This was a variable foggy morning. Sometimes I could see other buildings in the neighborhood and then the fog would close in and I couldn’t see anything. That is the way it was when I heard the plane roaring in. It was spitting rain.

Now at 10:30 I can hear noises from the street below. Glass seems to be falling continually.

Returning to my office after the blast, I saw how lucky it was that I got out into the hall. I would have been full of splintered glass if I’d been in here when it hit.

Firemen pant up stairs

Now, at 10:35, the first firemen have reached us on the 75th floor. They came panting up the stairs and said anybody who was able could start walking down the 75 flights. They said the fumes were clearing out.

There is no question about what side of the building the plane hit. My office is on the Northside (Uptown side) and it hit right above me.

On a later call to the UP offices, Mr. Irwin said that in addition to hearing the approaching plane he could actually see it hurtling through the fog and rain.

“That’s why I ducked,” he said.

After the firemen got up here, they began carrying people out, or at least helping them down the emergency stairways. People coming down from up above seemed dazed and couldn’t tell much about what had happened. All they wanted was to get to the street.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (July 29, 1945)

13 dead in B-25 crash into Empire State Building

Hundreds trapped in flaming structure 1,000 feet from street

NEW YORK (UP, July 28) – A B-25 Billy Mitchell bomber rammed into the 78th story of the Empire State Building at 9:52 a.m. today.

The plane exploded in a cone of flames that turned the world’s tallest skyscraper into a pillar of horror and brought death to at least 13 persons and injury to 25 more. All victims were believed from the New York area.

It was the most spectacular disaster to strike the New York area since the burning of the zeppelin Hindenburg.

A searing envelope of gasoline flames shrouded 10 stories of the spire-like tower of the 1,250-foot Empire State Building.

Hundreds trapped

It trapped hundreds of persons within flame and gas-filled rooms more than 1,000 feet above the street.

Three elevators plunged out of control from the 80th floor to the basement.

Broken glass and debris rained down over several square blocks. Half an hour after the explosion particles still sifted down.

So tremendous was the explosion, it ripped away the fog which had hidden the topmost stories of the skyscraper from the vision of the B-25 pilot.

Flames fill sky

For two minutes the pinnacle of the chromium-girt Empire State stood out sharp and clear in the drizzle while orange-red flames licked around.

Then the soft fog closed in again to hide the scene from the horrified sight of thousands of Midtown office workers who had rushed to windows at the sound of the explosion which echoed over Central Manhattan like a blockbuster.

Inside the 102-story building there was pandemonium.

The plane was en route to Newark, New Jersey, from New Bedford, on the final lap of a cross-country flight which started at Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

It was piloted by Lt. Col. William F. Smith Jr., 27, of Watertown, Massachusetts. He and his crew member, Sgt. Christopher S. Domitrovich, 31, of Granite City, Illinois, were instantly killed. Col. Smith recently returned from overseas.

A Navy chief petty officer riding in the plane as a passenger was also killed. He was not identified immediately.

Heads for skyscraper

The plane had inquired of LaGuardia Field by radio a few minutes before for instructions on landing conditions at Newark.

Suddenly scattered observers near the Empire State Tower heard the deep-throated roar of its motors. It was fiving in the overcast at about 1,000 feet and headed straight for the fog-hidden skyscraper.

A moment later it struck the north side of the building, between the 78th and 79th floors, penetrating with such force that one motor drove straight through the building and landed on the roof of the 12-story Waldorf Building adjoining it on 33rd Street.

Only the fact that the disaster occurred on a Saturday morning when many Empire State offices are closed kept down the toll of dead and injured.

Casualties among pedestrians outside the building were small because Midtown streets are not crowded on Saturdays as they are during the week, and rain and drizzle held down the number out of doors.

The B-25 was believed to have carried its normal crew of five, all of whom were instantly killed.

The force of the impact and explosion was such that many of the bodies were blown to bits.

Relatives visit morgue

The charred and broken bodies of the victims lay in Bellevue Hospital morgue tonight. Sheets shrouded them from the eyes of relatives.

They were the victims of the crash of a B-25 bomber into the Empire State Building.

Identification through appearance was impossible and not permitted. Relatives going to the morgue were shown only a handful of jewelry, a dental plate and three keys.

From these, Vincent M. Sozzi of New York identified an inscribed bracelet belonging to his sister, Jean Sozzi, 40, of Brooklyn. She was a stenographer at the War Relief Services of the National Catholic Welfare Council.

Ring identified

From an inscribed engagement ring, Raymond Cavanaugh of Union City, New Jersey, identified his sister.

Margaret Mullen, 33, of Hoboken, New Jersey, a bookkeeper in the Catholic office.

There was a link bracelet on a watch, numbered 930-79-620, not yet identified. There was a dental plate, its teeth burned away, which police hoped to trace.

There were the keys – one of which was inscribed “Penn 648,” which might hold a clue.

Eight of the victims were believed to be women.

One floor unoccupied

The 78th floor office where the plane struck was not occupied. But the 79th floor office, just above, was occupied by the National Catholic Welfare Council. Some 40 persons normally worked on this floor, about 25 of them in the Catholic Welfare offices. Many were absent due to Saturday holidays.

The most severe casualties were in the Catholic Welfare offices. Nine bodies were reported found on the 79th floor.

Three were found in two of the smashed elevators in the basement. The third elevator was empty.

Archbishop Francis J. Spellman described the disaster as a “new and terrifying sorrow” and said the Catholic workers who were killed had “dedicated, consecrated and sacrificed their lives to humanity.”

Special prayers

Special prayers will be offered in all churches of the archdiocese Sunday for the victims.

A service of Holy Sacrifice will be offered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral tomorrow and, on Wednesday, the Archbishop will preside at a solemn pontifical mass of requiem.

The worst damage was on the six floors from the 78th to the 84th story. Windows were blown from every frame and the plaster turned to dust. Much of the furnishings had vanished in the searing gasoline flames.

The marble tiling along the walls of one section of the 79th floor had been blown off. One of the plane’s engines caromed off and plunged into an elevator, killing an elevator girl and dropping down the shaft.

The plane’s cowling and part of its propeller were imbedded in the walls. Steel girders of the wrecked floors were twisted like jackstraws by the blast.

Rescue workers, knee deep in mortar, bricks and bomber fragments, saw a small card, its edges charred. It said: “Do not remove from Plane No. 577.”

There were 35 persons on the 86th floor observation platform when the plane hit. They had paid $1 to “see the sights of New York from the Empire State Tower.”

Louis Petley, 54, the guide, was apologizing for the fog which spoiled their view when disaster struck.

“I never heard anything like it in my life,” Petley said. “I jumped three feet in the air. I saw a flash of flame envelope the tower.”

Herded to safety

With difficulty, Petley managed to herd his horror-stricken sightseers down a stairway to the 65th floor where they took an elevator to the lobby.

“I wanted to keep them in the lobby for a minute,” he said, “but they all ran out, saying ‘We want to get out of here.’”

Survivors on the 78th and 79th floors were almost too dazed to tell what had happened. Most of them were burned or had been cut by splinters of glass.

Jumps to escape

Paul Deering, 40, publicity representative of the Catholic Welfare Council, jumped from an 86th floor window to escape the flames. His body landed on the 72nd floor parapet.

An elevator girl had just halted her cage on the 75th floor. The blast blew her out of the elevator and all the way across the hall.

The impact of the plane and its explosion tore a gaping 15-foot hole on the north side of the building. The plane hit just below the ceiling of the 78th floor, doing almost equal damage to the 78th and 79th stories.

On the south side of the building, there was a smaller hole, caused by the engine which plummeted through the building.

Management consultant James W. Irwin was sitting alone in his office on the 75th floor shortly before 10 a.m.

Outside the tower was shrouded in fog. Suddenly he heard the roar of an airplane which seemed to be coming directly his way.

Ran into hall

“I ran into the hall as the roar increased,” he said. “Just as I hit the hall the plane struck.

Mr. Irwin reported that the first firemen reached him on the 75th floor at 10:35. A four-alarm fire alarm had been turned in the moment the plane hit.

But rescue efforts were impeded by the damage which knocked out the elevators. It takes time to climb 75 to 80 flights of stairs.

Mayor F. H. LaGuardia inspected the scene about two hours after the crash. He walked over the rubbled 79th floor where rescue workers were piling together the bits and pieces of what had been busy office workers and stenographers.

‘Flying too low’

“It was just an oven,” he commented and pointed out that the plane “was flying too low.” There is a city regulation against flying below 5,000 feet over Manhattan.

However, the plane had left New Bedford, Massachusetts, to fly by “contact,” meaning that the pilot was flying by visual contact with the ground. It was bound for Newark, New Jersey.

When it approached Manhattan, it contacted LaGuardia Field which advised that the ceiling over Manhattan at that time was 1,100 feet which meant that the top 150 feet of the Empire State was shrouded by mist and fog.

‘Going to Newark’

The pilot of the bomber, contacting the LaGuardia Control Tower, was reported to have said: “I am going to Newark. Will you give me the weather there?”

The Tower told the pilot to maintain contact flying, meaning 1,000-foot visibility and three-mile visibility forward.

“At the present time,” the Tower told the pilot, “I cannot see the top of the Empire State Building.”

The Control Tower operators, it was said, ordinarily used the Empire State tower as a gauge for visibility. The pilot was instructed that if he could not maintain contact flying, he should return to LaGuardia Field.

Thousands gather

Thousands of persons congregated around the Empire State Building to watch the rescue work.

Four fire alarms brought the largest amount of firefighting apparatus ever assembled in New York City to the scene.

Scores of physicians, firemen, priests and nurses tramped the stairways of the upper floors where elevator service had been blasted out by the explosion.

The Empire State Building has a normal population of about 5,500 office workers and building employees. Today it was believed not more than 1,500 were in the building.

Tower to be closed

Gen. Hugh A. Drum, chairman of Empire State, Inc. declared 10 hours after the accident that engineers had inspected the building and found “no structural damage.”

He said that most of the damage, an estimate of which is in preparation, resulted from the burning airplane gas “and the passage of parts of the plane through the building.”

Gen. Drum said the tower of the building would be closed indefinitely to visitors, but service was uninterrupted on the first 67 floors, and would be reinstated upwards “in the near future.”

Members of the Public Relations Office of the building said the damage was believed to approximate $250,000. The building is valued at $30 million.

[NormanStewart]

Apprentice becomes doctor at scene of big tragedy

Still in training, boy, 17, treats many victims with the skill of a veteran
By Donald Moloney, as told to Mary Harrington, United Press staff writer

NEW YORK (UP, July 28) – I’m just a U.S. Coast Guard hospital apprentice, second class, and I’m still in training. I suppose I could get prosecuted for what I did.

I was on 34th Street and saw the B-25 crash into the Empire State Building. There was a drugstore across the street. They gave me apllta, gave syringes, two dozen needles, eight grains of morphine, bandages, 10 tubes of burn ointment and sterile water alcohol.

I ran first to the sub-basement. Somebody shouted that help was needed there. I’m little, so the firemen let me climb down into the elevator, where the elevator girl was trapped. I had heard the elevator shoot down about 70 floors.

She was still alive and screaming. She hung on to me so I could hardly help her. I gave her morphine to ease the pain, and marked the dosage on her arm, where it wasn’t burned, with her lipstick. I put oil on her burned face.

That was the only part of her I dared treat. The rest of her body was burned and charred. I put on sterile bandages, though. We carried her out. A priest and a rabbi heled me. The morphine didn’t help much. Her legs were crushed and I think her back was broken.

There was another elevator operator in the basement, in the same shape. I helped him, too.

Then I went up to the 79th floor. I picked up two heads and parts of four bodies and helped stack them on a table.

They called me down to the 70th floor, and I carried three women from there to the 67th floor. They had fixed the elevators. I guess I must have carried and treated about 20 people. All of them were burned, and suffering terribly from shock. I gave morphine to 14 people.

We’ve been told in school for eight months, at Manhattan Beach and Groton, Connecticut, how to treat people suffering from burns and shock.

On the 69th floor I treated five injured. A man had been pouring whisky down their throats. I put one woman’s arm in a triangular bandage, and sterile bandages on another’s burns. I was carrying one woman to the elevator when another crawled over and put her arms around my legs.

“God in Heaven, help me.” She screamed, and then fainted. I’ll have nightmares for a long time. Those dead people up there. Thank God they never knew what happened to them. They couldn’t. The blast blew them apart in an instant.

I always wanted to be a surgeon. I want to practice at home, in Detroit. A couple of shore patrolmen took me out to a bar at one o’clock when the head doctor said everything was under control. I started shaking as soon as he said that. I don’t know why. I was real calm before.

Maybe that’s what my commanding officer meant when he said I couldn’t ever be the only medical corpsman on one of those small ships, like I want. He said I was too young, that I couldn’t take the responsibility. I guess I am. I’m only 17.

[NormanStewart]

Tighter flying laws suggested by senator

WASHINGTON (UP, July 28) – Sen. James M. Mead (D-New York), “horrified” at the bomber crash against the Empire State Building, expressed belief today that it may lead to tighter laws on flights over congested areas.

Mr. Mead contemplates the possibility of thousands of airplanes in congested areas in the post-war era, most of them privately owned and operated.

He said it indicated a need of the utmost in safety controls.