Did you know that two New York skyscrapers were hit by planes near the end of World War II?

Nobody who has ever seen photos of United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 will forget the fear, confusion and tragedy of that day. However, we should remember that most times a prominent edifice is hit by an airplane is just a tragic accident. In fact, not one but two such accidents happened in New York near the end of World War II.

On July 28, 1945, while the Potsdam Conference (Read our earlier article) was still going on in Europe, Lieutenant Colonel William Franklin Smith Jr. was flying a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber (the type used in the famous Doolittle Raid (Read our earlier article)) from Bedford Army Air Field in Massachusetts to LaGuardia in New York with one crewmember and a passenger, a Navy Aviation serviceman, hitching a ride. Thick fog over the city prompted the pilot to request to divert to Newark Airport. He was advised of zero visibility but proceeded anyway. Getting disoriented in the fog, the plane almost hit the Chrysler Building – swerving aside in the last moment only to hit the Empire State Building instead.

The plane crashed into the building between the 78th and 80th floors at 9:40 a.m., making an 18-by-20-foot (5.5 by 6.1 m) hole in the structure. The three man onboard and 11 people in the building died, with the passenger flying into an elevator shaft and falling to the bottom, where his body was only found two days later. Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver suffered heavy burns on the 80th floor and was being taken to the ground floor in another elevator car, when that came loose and plunged 75 floors down. She miraculously survived, albeit with grievous injuries, thanks to an air cushion forming in the shaft under the elevator car and slowing it down somewhat. One aircraft engine flew through the building and dropped on top of another one on the other side, starting a fire.

Less than a year later, on May 20, 1946, New York was shocked by another similar tragedy. A Beechcraft C-45F Expeditor, a widely used multipurpose craft, crashed into 40 Wall Street, also known as the Trump Building or the Bank of Manhattan Building, hitting the 58th floor and killing all five people onboard, including a Women's Army Corps officer (interestingly, this plane also was owned by the U.S. Army Air Corps, and fog was identified as the main cause of the accident this time as well.) No people in the building or on the ground were killed or hurt. The Army banned its planes from landing in New York City in fog after the two incidents.

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