The Guinness World Record for surviving the longest fall in a plunging elevator was set on July 28, 1945, when Betty Lou Oliver’s elevator dropped 75 stories in the Empire State Building. Oliver broker her pelvis, back, and neck, but she recovered.
She also recovered from severe burns — but she’d been burned before the elevator fell. There was a pretty bad fire on the 80th floor, and a medical crew had put Oliver into the elevator so she could be lowered for treatment. Oddly enough, Oliver was on the scene because she was an elevator operator — different elevator, of course. What the rescuers didn’t know was that the fire had damaged the elevator cables.
Fires in the upper stories of skyscrapers were a problem at the time, and still are. The NY fire department managed to put out the Empire State fire after about 40 minutes, but even after 75 years it’s still the only significant fire at that height that’s ever been controlled.
So why, you might well ask, was there a big fire on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building on this day in 1945? It was because a B-25 bomber had just hit it, of course. The B-25, named “Old John Feather Merchant”, was on its way from the Bedford Army Air Field to Newark Airport. The Bedford Air Field is now called Hanscom Air Force Base, but it’s still there in Bedford, Massachusetts. The B-25 pilot had radioed Newark Airport for clearance to land, and decided to continue even though he was told there was zero visibility because of thick fog.
When the plane descended into the fog, it was over Manhattan, and used the Chrysler Building — the spire could be seen rising out of the fog — as a landmark. “Turn left over the Chrysler Building and continue your descent”, was the instruction. But once in the fog, the pilot got disoriented and turned right instead.
The Empire State Building wasn’t structurally affected by the crash, and reopened just two days later. Then, less than a year after the B-25 crash, a smaller plane — also an Army Air Force flight heading for Newark Airport — crashed into another Manhattan building at 40 Wall Street. That building’s current leaseholder changed its name to “Trump Tower”.
You’d think that would have been the end of airplane accidents involving New York buildings, but in 2006 it happened again; a single-engine plane piloted by Cory Lidle — a pitcher for the Yankees — hit an apartment building next to the East River. There wasn’t any fog that time; the plane was trying to make a turn over the river.
July 28 isn’t an entirely dark day in aviation history, though. It’s also the day of the first flight of the B-17 “Flying Fortress” in 1935. It was a pretty durable plane; there are 9 of them still flying. None are based anywhere near Manhattan, though.
