The other time a plane crashed into a New York City skyscraper

There is one date that most people associate with a plane crashing into the tallest building in New York City, but 56 years before Sept. 11, 2001, an aircraft navigating through challenging weather collided with a different Manhattan landmark -- one that was the tallest skyscraper in the world at the time. The parallels of the two crashes are still used to this day to teach pilots.

On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber piloted by Lt. Col. William Franklin Smith Jr. took off from Bedford, Massachusetts, intending to drop off passengers in Newark, New Jersey, before continuing on to South Dakota.

Smith was a decorated pilot as a member of the Air Force's 457th Bomb Group, having logged more than 1,000 combat hours in World War II, during which he piloted through intense action across Europe. TIME magazine reported that Smith "hammered at targets in central Germany," per his obituary in the West Point alumni magazine.

But in New York City on that fateful Saturday in July, Smith encountered a new type of aerial attack: fog.

Before the B-25 Mitchell bomber could depart for the New York City area, a dense fog enveloped the region, reducing visibility to "almost zero," air traffic controllers told Smith, according to Arthur Weingarten's book The Sky Is Falling.

The gaping hole, circled, at the 78th and 79th floors of the Empire State Building in New York, marks the place where the B-25 army bomber crashed into the structure on July 28, 1945, killing at least 13 people. Photo was made July 29, after the dense fog that helped cause the crash dissipated. (AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons)

Towering high above the rest of the buildings in the city was the famed Empire State Building, which was completed in 1931 and reigned as the tallest building in the world. It would still be another 26 years until another building eclipsed its 1,250-foot height. In 1971, the World Trade Center twin towers, a few miles to the south in lower Manhattan, became the world's tallest buildings.

Smith's original flight plan was delayed due to the poor weather that day then rerouted from Newark to LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

Onboard the bomber that day were Smith, Staff Sergeant Christopher Domitrovich and Navy Aviation Machinist's Mate Albert Perna. It was a routine personnel transport mission.

As planes approach the city from the north, pilots used the Empire State Building as a landmark for landing at LaGuardia, which is situated about 6 miles to the northeast. When Smith, shrouded in the thick fog that blanketed the region that morning, radioed in to LaGuardia's air traffic tower asking for permission to land, the controllers' response was, "We're unable to see the top of the Empire State Building," TIME reported at the time.

But despite the denial of approval for landing at LaGuardia, Smith was determined to land sooner rather than later. As stated in his obituary, he was a man who "wanted to do everything in a military manner, but fast and well."

According to Weingarten, Smith's reply to the air traffic controllers was "Thank you very much," before signing off and heading toward Newark.

"He was Russian-rouletting it," Weingarten told The New York Times in 1995. "He thought he was on final approach heading into Newark, and he was just crossing the East River right over the 59th Street Bridge. Had he kicked left rudder when he passed the Chrysler Building, he'd have been home free. But he started to go right rudder, and that put him in the path of the Empire State Building."

The effect of fog and low visibility flight conditions on pilots is well understood among aviation experts.

Smoke billows from the Empire State Building in New York, July 28, 1945, after an Army B-25 bomber enroute to Newark Airport crashed into the upper floors of the structure. Fires were started on the upper eleven floors of the building. (AP Photo)

Dr. Michael Canders, director of the Aviation Center at Farmingdale State College on Long Island, told AccuWeather that the cause of many plane accidents is poor weather, which can lead to a pilot's physical senses easily betraying them amid low visibility conditions.

"Pilots are typically relying on the outside references, on looking outside," Canders said. "When they get into what we call instrument meteorological conditions or no outside reference, it's very easy to get disoriented in the air."

That disorientation doesn't just happen with a pilot's eyes and what they see - or don't see - but it mainly occurs in the ears.

Inside your inner ear are three tiny tubes called semi-circular canals. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the inner ear is home to the vestibular system, which regulates a person's equilibrium.

Those semi-circular canals play a key role in helping a human detect angular acceleration.

"Your semi-circular canals in your ears may fool you as to what profile you're in," Canders said. "That's compensated by your vision, but without that eye, without that visual sensation, you can quickly get disoriented and put the aircraft in a bad spot or strike a building as what happened in this case."

According to Canders, the kind of mistake that Smith made can occur far more easily than many people may think.

When a pilot's vision is impaired, the vestibular system has to readjust quickly, which can prove fatally disorienting.

This view of the Empire State Building disaster caused by a low flying B-25 bomber which crashed into the 79th floor of the building in New York on July 28, 1945, was taken from above and looks down past the gaping hole in the side of the building to 34th Street. (AP Photo/Ernie Sisto/New York Times)

"So when you make a turn and you're in a turn, your semi-circular canal adjusts to that," he said. "But when you come out of the turn, it has to readjust. So it's very easy for that vestibular system, without being in combination with your visual system, to get disoriented."

"You can think you're maybe in a turn when you're not," he continued, "or you're maybe thinking you're descending when you're not or climbing when you're not."

Following his instruction to not land at LaGuardia, Smith took what he thought was a right turn toward the Hudson River, intending to navigate toward Newark and land there as the original flight plan had called for.

Instead, he tragically embarked on a sharp descent in the opposite direction toward the East River. In Smith's mistake, when he thought he was piloting over Manhattan's west side, he was actually hurtling right over the heart of midtown.

Canders told AccuWeather that a flight over the Hudson River is a crucial teaching moment he includes in his senior year class. The natural landmark is important for pilots to study because of how it helps position aviators en route to LaGuardia.

"I take the students right up that Hudson River and we look at all of these interesting things including the Empire State Building," Canders said. "The Empire State Building is sometimes a little bit harder to see, but it's nice and tall and sort of in the middle of midtown."

On a clear day, that is.

Along Smith's disoriented path over Manhattan, the pilot zipped through the city skyline at about 225 mph, unknowingly missing the Chrysler Building and the Grand Central Office Building by the narrowest of margins.

A military policeman, left, guards the wreckage of a B-25 Bomber after the low-flying plane crashed through the north wall of the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City, July 28, 1945. Other officials and workers are seen in the background. (AP Photo)

"So he started to make a little bit of a turn that brought him over midtown Manhattan," Weingarten said. "And as he straightened out, the clouds broke up enough for him to realize he was flying among skyscrapers."

Walter Daniels, an editor with The New York Times, was walking on 43rd Street at the time of the disaster, according to The National Interest.

"The roar of the motors sounded ominously low," he said. "And it seemed to be going at a terrific speed. I believe people must have sensed disaster; everyone in sight started running for Fifth Avenue to see what was happening."

And then the fog broke.

Just feet ahead of Smith's windshield loomed the city's tallest building. Sports announcer Stanley Lomax of WOR radio was driving to work when he heard the bomber overhead, flying far too close, The National Interest reported. As Lomax looked up, he instinctively shouted, "Climb, you fool!"

At the last second, Smith attempted to rectify his mistake by doing just that - but his efforts to clear the skyscraper proved far too little far too late. At 9:40 a.m., the B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building.

More than 900 feet above 34th street in Manhattan, the bomber collided with the 78th and 79th floors. Smith, Domitrovich and Perna perished in a blink. Eleven others in the building died from the impact and the ensuing fire.

Theresa Fortier Willig, a secretary in the Catholic War Relief office, worked on the 79th floor. She told The New York Times that no one on the floor knew what was happening.

"Who'd have thought a plane? We were used to having clouds come in the windows up there," she recalled in 1995. "The building wasn't air-conditioned, and the first time I went in there, I was all agog because here were these little wisps of clouds drifting in the window."

Despite the workers' confusion, the pandemonium prompted Willig and her coworkers to act fast.

When the streams of fuel became a rapid cascade of flames, she pulled the two rings off her fingers and tossed them out the window, expecting to never see them again.

One of those rings, a friendship ring from her boyfriend, would not only be unearthed on the street below but later replaced by a wedding ring from that boyfriend years later.

But back inside the Empire State Building, quick thinking by Willig and her coworkers allowed them to usher a crowd of workers into a side room, where they sealed the door to keep out the smoke. Willig and countless others would be saved by the heroic efforts of firefighters.

At the scene of impact, a gaping 18-by-20-foot hole spanned the side of the skyscraper at the 78th and 79th floors. The destroyed offices on those floors were the War Relief Services and the National Catholic Welfare Council.

The aircraft's fuel tanks detonated after impact, fueling the fatal blaze in the offices. Farther inside, an engine and part of the plane's landing gear plummeted through an elevator shaft, falling all the way to the building's sub-basement. Meanwhile, the plane's other engine plowed all the way through the building, coming out the other side and crashing through the roof of a sculptor's studio.

A photo from the tragic day taken from inside the studio shows not only the gaping hole left by the engine but also just how thick the fog was that day. Though the neighboring Empire State Building can be seen through the hole, the cloudy weather makes it completely impossible to see the top of the skyscraper.

The Empire State Building can be viewed through a hole in the roof of a penthouse on 33rd street, New York, in this July 28, 1945 photo. Debris from an army B-25 bomber which crashed into the Empire State Building caused the hole in the roof along with a fire to the penthouse. (AP Photo/stf)

Despite the vast differences in scope and impact, right down to the opposite weather conditions under which each occurred, Canders said he uses both the tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Empire State Building crash of 1945 to teach aviation lessons to his students.

"I instantly compare [the 1945 crash] to what happened on 9/11. That's just in my head that way, and I'm sort of struck by the fact that it could have been much worse, I think," Canders said of the Empire State Building accident. "But one of the things that I found interesting was the difference in size between a B-25 and a [Boeing] 767," the plane that the terrorists hijacked and crashed into the twin towers.

While the impact, both physically in size and figuratively on the nation, of the Sept. 11 hijackings have left a much larger mark in the history books, Canders reiterated that it's important for pilots to learn from both accidents and tragedies in order to avoid history repeating itself.

The parallels between the two crashes can be astonishing. Both involved the tallest buildings in the city at the time of the tragedy. Both featured planes that took off from eastern Massachusetts. Both featured the heroic work of firefighters that raced into the skyscrapers to save hundreds of lives.

While the 9/11 hijackings would trigger a long-lasting war, many New Yorkers in 1945 first thought the Empire State Building crash was also an act of a long-lasting war. The bomber's collision with the Empire State Building came in the waning months of World War II, with many Americans remaining on edge for another attack from Japan following Pearl Harbor nearly four years earlier.

Just one week after Smith's accident, the U.S. would drop the first of two atomic bombs on the East Asian country just one week after the Empire State Building accident.

Every aviation moment in history, whether heroic or tragic, is a teaching moment, he said.

"The B-25 lesson learned is, ‘hey, listen to air traffic control, make sure that if they're telling you something, you understand what they're saying and understand they're trying to help you,'" Canders said. "A lot of aviation is lifelong learning and we encourage the students to watch all of these, to learn about all these accidents."

Similar to the Sept. 11 attacks, the Empire State Building crash of 1945 made big news overseas. Watch newsreel footage below showing how the story was portrayed to people in England at the time.

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