99% Invisible - 99- The View From The 79th Floor

Episode Date: January 15, 2014

On July 28, 1945, an airplane crashed into the Empire State Building. A B-25 bomber was flying a routine mission, chartering servicemen from Massachusetts to New York City. Capt. William F. Smith, who had led some of the most dangerous … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. From the always stunning, amazing award-winning radio diaries. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm totally not. Here is Joe Richmond. It was strangely cold and foggy on the morning of July 28, 1945. The World War II was coming to a close, and the mood in New York City on that Saturday was cheerful. Millions were eating breakfast, running errands, and one 20-year-old woman was on her way to the 80th floor of the tallest building in the world. Her name was Betty

Lou Oliver, and she spent her days going up and down and up and down the Empire State Building as the operator of elevator number six. While Betty worked that morning in her crisp uniform smiling at passengers, she couldn't have known that outside the building a young US Army pilot on his way to LaGuardia Airport was lost in the thick fog and flying low over Manhattan. She couldn't have known that the pilot of that B-25 had just narrowly missed hitting the Chrysler building, then Grand Central. She might have heard the roar of the plane as it got closer, and she might have wondered what it was, as she got called up to the 80th floor just before 10am. At the exact moment, the plane slammed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building.

Betty experienced every elevator rider's worst nightmare. Down she fell, floor by floor, more than a thousand feet to the sub-basement. What happened next put Betty Lou Oliver in the Guinness Book of World Records. Somehow air pressure built up as the elevator dropped, slowing the fall. Somehow, air pressure built up as the elevator dropped, slowing the fall. At the same time, thousands of feet of loose elevator cables were coiling up on the bottom of the shaft. When the elevator car reached the bottom, those cables acted like a giant spring to cushion the landing.

It was not a gentle impact, Betty broke her back and both legs, but she was alive. There was a great roaring inside my head, she said, and blackness. Every chapter of history is made of lots of little stories, and that was especially true on July 28, 1945, the day a plane crashed into the Empire State Building. This is the view from the 79th floor. My name is Terez, 40-year-old, in 1945. I was 20 years old, and I worked for Catholic Relief Services on the 79th floor of the Empire State Building. My name is Gloria Paul. In 1945, I was working for the USO headquarters.

I was on the 56th floor of the Empire State Building. It was just exciting every time I got off the train and went up to that 56th floor that was excitement. It was the Empire State Building, it's all this building in the world at that time. Rising a quarter of a mile straight up into the clouds, the world's tallest structure, the Empire State Building. From an observation platform, visitors look down on the New

York skyline, 1200 feet below. Everyone on the ground looks so small, the cars, the people. You were really part of the clouds. The Empire State Building, a giant of steel and stone, a mark of 20th century progress. I'm Arthur Wengarton. I wrote the book The Sky is Falling, about the B-25 bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building. The pilot of the plane was Captain William Franklin Smith, a highly decorated pilot. Early in the morning on July 28, 1945, Captain Smith left from Massachusetts to the New York area. That morning was a misty cloudy day at the Empire State Building. We couldn't really

see the ground from the 79th floor. And it was so foggy outside. I was looking out of the window. There was nothing to see. It was just like peace soup. It was like a London fog. It was very foggy in New York this morning when an Army B-25 twin engine bomber passed over La Guadilla Field and asked for a weather report. When Captain Smith called into LaGuardia Field and said, I request clearance to land. The tower said, we have almost zero visibility here. I suggest you do not land here at LaGuardia. The pilot was warned that the weather was bad and that the tower of the Empire State Building,

a landmark for Ammon in this area, could not be seen. Smith said, thank you very much and signed off. He ignored it. After over 50 missions in Europe, flying in the worst weather conditions imaginable, what could possibly happen to him here in the United States? And so he started to make a little bit of a turn which brought him over Midtown Manhattan. And as he started to straighten out, the clouds broke up enough for him to realize he was flying among skyscrapers.

On a foggy Saturday morning, five blocks north of the Empire State Building, James E. Eger was dictating into his sound scriber machine a letter to Dean Crawford of the University of Michigan. He was interrupted by the sound of a plane rolling down Fifth Avenue, at less than a thousand feet. and you can hear him on the tape, dictating the letter asud which is the impact of the bomber into the Empire State Building. At about five minutes of ten I got up from my desk and that was the end of the office as it existed. We are delaying the start of our regularly scheduled program to bring you a special news report on the crash of an airplane into the Empire State Building. Columbia Station's very far-cavenation report is due to the end of the sudden the building felt like it was going to just topple right over.

It just threw me across the room room and I landed against the wall. People were screaming and looking at each other and didn't know what to do. We didn't know there was a bomber. But what happened? A B-25 Mitchell bomber on a flight, apparently a routine flight from Boston to Newark or New York City, crashed into the 78th or the 79th story of the Empire State Building and what the final toll will be, there is no way of telling it this time. On the other side of the office, all I could see was flames. Mr. Fountain was walking through the office when the plane hit the building and he was on

fire. His clothes were on fire, his head was on fire. Six of us managed to get into this one office that seemed to be untouched by the fire and closed the door before it engulfed us. There was no doubt that the other people must have been killed. The four alarm fires drawn every piece of fire apparatus to the busy scene of Fifth Avenue in 34th Street, in the heart of Manhattan, and hundreds of office workers were trapped a fifth of a mile above the street level.

It was a very small universe at that point. You sort of stuck there, and then Ireland would fire all around us. A couple of the women had passed out from the smoke and I had a handkerchief in my pocket and so I used that to cover my nose and mouth to protect me from the fumes. But I didn't expect to get out alive. Somebody opened the window and I'm sitting there and I thought about my rings and I'm sitting there. And I thought about my rings, and I figured somebody else might as well have you sat of them. So I took them off my fingers,

and it's proof of them out the window. We have contacted the night witness, Mr. Phil Kirby, as a grant advertising agency. We've contacted him by telephone, Mr. Kirby. I looked out of the window, and it was very, very smokey, terribly smokey. And I looked out of the window, and I saw two girls trapped on the 78th floor. That's above our floor. You see, I'm in the 76th, there's two flights up. A man appeared, you know, a few stories down.

He looked up and he seemed to look up to us. And I think Charlotte was sitting, you know, with her legs dangling inside the office and we were holding on to her. It gave her a better view of what was going on. Then one girl got out of the window and I said, get back, get back, get back. I said, the final being here soon, Bill.

So she said, we'll come quickly because our whole office is in flames. Yes, can't wait long. All right, you get back now, big, good, good, you're going to get back. I guess he was trying to give us a little solace. I know that you're there, don't worry. And that was a connection with the rest of the world. We all felt a little better to know that someone knew we were there.

When the plane hit the outside of the building, it kept on going, and the engines continued about 20 feet into the building and went down through the elevator shaft. What was an elevator shaft? When the plane hit, parts of the engine flew ahead and severed the lifting cables of the elevators that had been at the 79th floor. Sitting in one of the elevators was a young elevator operator named Betty Lou Oliver. She started to plunge down the elevator shaft from the 79th floor. Cables of two of the cars were sheared, sending both elevators crashing to the subbasements

of the Empire State Building. She was alive. She broke her pelvis and her back and her neck. But she survived. Now, Reverend John J. Morrison has just come in and he has just given the last rights to a man who jumped and landed on a parapet. I think it's on the 60, I don't know, 65th or 66th floor. It's down below, is that anyway? Yeah, I see.

My name is Sharon Deering, Sizzascus. My father was Paul Deering. My father was in a corner office on the 79th floor. He either was forced out by the crash and the concussion or he actually had to jump when he saw a whole place on fire. It's more likely that he had to jump. You know if you were ever up 79 floors and looking down, to think of someone having to jump out of a window up there, that's what I think of. We're speaking from the Empire State Building,

near the top of the building, the 79th floor where firemen are picking up the debris caused by the crash of a Mitchell B-25 bomber into this building right about 40 feet from where we stand. All of a sudden he was here with firemen and they're coming to rescue us. All dressed up in their raincoats and whatever they wear, you know, when it was just wonderful. We climbed out through the broken glass. I was just grateful to be alive. The walls are still hot, the brick and stone walls that we have our hand on as we talk are still hot with the flame that has been out for over an hour now.

112 flights later. We got to the bottom floor, but we didn't know what happened until we came out of the building. I see crowds of people all kind of looking at each other. I said, what happened? What happened? What happened? And he pointed up to the 79th floor.

I saw the tail of a B25 sticking out. Well, we're going to get off there here very shortly because we have the story told now, the B25 two-engine Army bomber crashing into the Empire of State Building, just a few minutes before 10 o'clock. We have been going for a few minutes. That morning 11 people died in the offices and three in the plane for a total of 14 people.

This is Don Gutter and this is the National Broadcasting Company. We return you now to the music of the first piano quartet. The view from the 79th floor was produced by Joe Richmond, Samarra Fremark and Sarah Kramer for Radio Diaries. If you've ever turned on NPR in the afternoon and you hear some beautifully composed, sound rich, first person documentary that knocked you out. It was probably Radio Diaries. Do yourself a favor. Go straight to the source and subscribe to their newly revamped podcast.

It's so good. You can find it at radiodiaries.org. 99% Invisible is Sam Greenspan Avery Truffleman and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 local public radio KALW in San Francisco and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook. in San Francisco. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm