1945 Empire State Building Plane Crash: One Woman Fell 75 Floors and Lived

On July 28, 1945, a US Army B-25 bomber flying blind through fog hit the Empire StateEmpire State BuildingThe 1931 Art Deco skyscraper whose 86th floor open-air deck remains the classic New York observation experience. Building's 79th floor, killing 14 people. Twenty-year-old elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver, burned at her 80th-floor post, was placed in an elevator whose cables snapped. She fell 75 stories to the sub-basement and survived.

A bomber in the fog over Manhattan

The morning was grey and wet, and a US Army B-25 bomber was lost in thick fog above the city, flying low with no view of the tower ahead. It struck the Empire State Building at the 79th floor, tearing into offices and setting the upper floors alight. Fourteen people died. The tower, then the tallest in the world, stayed standing, its frame holding around a hole punched 79 floors above the street.

Betty Lou Oliver's 75-story fall

Betty Lou Oliver, 20, was working the elevators on the 80th floor, one level above the impact, and was burned when the plane came through. Rescuers put her into a car to get her down through the smoke. The cables, weakened by fire and impact, snapped. The elevator dropped 75 stories to the sub-basement. Compressed air in the shaft resisted the plunge, and coiled cable at the bottom of the shaft absorbed the landing. Oliver lived, and her fall remains the Guinness record for the longest survived in an elevator.

Why the record still stands

Guinness lists no longer fall survived by anyone, anywhere, in an elevator. The outcome rested on physics and chance: a shaft that behaved like a piston, air compressing beneath a falling car, and a coil of steel cable that was never meant to act as a cushion. A 20-year-old operator, already burned, walked away from a drop that would ordinarily be fatal many times over, and nothing in the building's design anticipated a bomber taking out an elevator's cables 80 floors up.

How to stand above the scar

The crash point sits above the public floors, but the observatory puts visitors in the same column of air. Timed tickets for the Empire State Building observatory are the only way up, the entrance is at 20 West 34th Street, a short walk from the 34th Street subway stations and Grand Central TerminalGrand Central TerminalThe 1913 Beaux-Arts rail terminal with the turquoise zodiac ceiling, whispering gallery and oyster bar.. The outdoor 86th-floor deck sits seven floors above the point of impact, the closest a visitor can stand to it, since the floors around the crash are not open to the public. The 102nd-floor deck, reached with a separate ticket, adds a glassed-in view higher still. Take the first timed slot of the morning or a slot after 9 p.m. to dodge the worst queues, and note that midweek slots are usually calmer than weekends. Clear days are worth waiting for: the north view runs straight up Central ParkCentral ParkThe 843-acre engineered wilderness at Manhattan's heart, designed by Olmsted and Vaux in 1858., and the harbor shows to the south. An 86th-floor observatory ticket, the standard way up, starts from $44 (estimated), traveler reviews on the activity page are the quickest way to judge which slot suits a trip.

More on the place itself: empire state building.