The Time an Army Bomber Crashed into the Empire State Building During WWII

The last time that Therese Fortier Willig saw her boss on July 28, 1945, his head and clothes were on fire.

Willig, then 20 years old, was working for Catholic Relief Services on the 79th floor of New York City's iconic Empire State Building when a U.S. Army Air Force B-25 bomber accidentally crashed into the skyscraper. Her supervisor, Joe Fountain, died four days later, one of 14 people who were killed in the bizarre and horrifying incident.

"It was a very small universe at that point," Willig told National Public Radio in 2008. "You're sort of stuck there, [on] an island with fire all around us."

The flight was supposed to be routine. When Lt. Col. William F. Smith took off from Bedford, Massachusetts, for a scheduled 215-mile flight to LaGuardia Airport in New York, he was joined by only two passengers. There was no military purpose to the flight, which took place five weeks before the end of World War II; Smith was simply giving a couple of other service members a ride home.

The flight was made much more perilous on that fateful Saturday, however, because of the dense fog enveloping New York City. When the 27-year-old Smith asked for permission to land at LaGuardia Airport, he was told instead to divert the military plane to Newark, N.J. While following those instructions, though, Smith is believed to have taken an ill-advised route, right through Midtown Manhattan.

It turned out to be a fatal mistake. Flying in little to no visibility, Smith could barely see beyond the cockpit's windshield and was maneuvering the bomber at an extremely low altitude. After narrowly avoiding crashing into the Chrysler Building, Smith banked the B-25 slightly to the left and struck the north side of the Empire State Building head-on. Traveling at a speed of about 200 mph, the plane knocked out the 78th and 79th floors of the 102-story-tall skyscraper -- then the tallest in the world -- and exploded.

"I was at the file cabinet, and all of a sudden, the building felt like it was going to just topple right over," Gloria Pall, who was working in the USO headquarters on the 56th floor, told NPR. "It just threw me across the room, and I landed against the wall. People were screaming and looking at each other and didn't know what to do."

The plane created a 360-square-foot hole, tearing through steel and stone "as if they were papier-mâché," as Time magazine reported at the time. Fire spread quickly over the span of 11 floors as workers raced to avoid the flames and New Yorkers looked up from below, not quite believing what they were seeing.

As those on the affected floors scurried as fast as they could, they had no idea exactly what happened. Willig did not think initially that an aircraft caused all this damage.

"The war in Europe had ended, but it hadn't ended in Japan," Willig told The New York Times in 2006. "I thought in terms of a bomb. I didn't think of an airplane. We just didn't know."

What actually happened did not become clear to many of the building's occupants until they were rescued or made their way onto the street. In the meantime, the approaching flames produced chaos and terror.

One man jumped to his death, and many victims were burned beyond recognition. While one engine landed atop a penthouse apartment across the street, the other one snapped an elevator cable while 20-year-old Betty Lou Oliver -- a temporary office worker waiting for her husband, a Navy torpedoman, to return from overseas -- was inside. Screaming frantically as the car plummeted 75 floors at breakneck speed, her life was spared only because the emergency brake was activated.

"I started yelling and pounding on the floor," Oliver, who sustained a broken pelvis, back and neck, told the Courier-News of New Jersey. "I was going down so fast that I just had to hang onto the sides of the elevator to keep from floating."

The crash, which caused about $1 million in damage (roughly $17.5 million in 2024), represented the first time that an airplane struck a skyscraper in the United States' most populous city, and as tragic as it was, it could have been much worse: Because it happened on a weekend, fewer people were working.

The three service members onboard the B-25 bomber were killed, including Smith, a 1942 U.S. Military Academy graduate who completed more than 40 missions in Europe with the Eighth Air Force. His body was discovered two days later at the bottom of an elevator shaft. In addition, 11 office workers died and at least 24 others were injured.

As the flames and fumes spread, Willig and a handful of co-workers found a safe office space, closed the door and covered their mouths and noses while waiting (hopefully) to be rescued. Not sure whether anyone would come, Willig removed the rings from her fingers and, figuring someone might want them, threw them out the window.

After the firemen arrived, she made her way safely outside. She was one of the lucky ones.

"I was just grateful to be alive," Willig said, per the NPR segment.

Want to Know More About the Military?

Be sure to get the latest news about the U.S. military, as well as critical info about how to join and all the benefits of service. Subscribe to Military.com and receive customized updates delivered straight to your inbox.