April 21, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in July 1945, a U.S. B-25 Mitchell bomber got lost in heavy fog over Manhattan. Here’s The History Guy with the forgotten—and astonishing—story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
And we continue with our American Stories. Our next story
comes to us from a man who's simply known as
the History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of
thousands of people of all ages on YouTube. The History
Guy is also heard here at our American Stories. In
July of nineteen forty five, a US B twenty five
(00:33):
Mitchell got lost in heavy fog over Manhattan. Here's the
History Guy remembering the B twenty five Empire State building craft.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
The summer of nineteen forty five represented hope for a
war weary nation. Germany had surrendered in May. In the Pacific,
General Douglas MacArthur announced that the Philippines had been liberated,
and in New Mexico, the United States tests at the
bomb that would finally put an end to the war.
There was plenty of reason in July nineteen forty five
(01:08):
for New Yorkers to look forward to a period piece,
but their piece was shattered with a spectacular accident involving
a United States Army Air Force plane and the tallest
building in the world. The morning of Saturday, July eighteenth,
nineteen forty five, and United States Army Air Force's B
twenty five Mitchell was flying from Bedford Army Airfield in
(01:31):
Massachusetts to New Jersey's Newark Airport. At the controls of
the plane was Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith, Junior. The
twenty seven year old Smith was an experienced pilot, a
veteran of more than thirty missions in one thousand combat
hours playing B seventeen bombers over Europe during the war.
The B twenty five was a twin engine bomber, smaller
(01:51):
than the B seventeens that Smith had fun over Europe.
This plane, using callsign five seven seven and nicknamed Old
John feather Merchant, had been converted to five VIPs. Smith
had piled the plane from Sioux Falls Army air Base
in South Dakota and was scheduled to pick up his
committing officer in Newark before continuing back to Sue Falls.
He was accompanied by thirty year old Army Air Force
(02:13):
staff Sergeant Christopher Dimitrovich and nineteen year old Navy machinist
mate Albert Perna, who was hitching a ride from Massachusetts
to see his family in Brooklyn. As the plane approached
New York City, it ran into heavy fog. Smith requested
permission to land at New York's municipal airport to La
Guardia Field, but was advised that the visibility was too
low and told to go on to Newark. The Guardian.
(02:36):
Air traffic control signed off with a warning about visibility
in the fog at the present time. The controller said,
I cannot see the top of the Empire State Building.
The words turned out to be huntingly cryptic. Smith responded,
thank you very much. It's not exactly clear what happened next,
but it seems likely that Smith mistook the East River
(02:57):
for the Hudson. That was a fatal mistake. Had he
turned left as he came by the Chrysler building, he
would have been safe, but disoriented, he turned right, taking
his plane straight over the island of Manhattan. Air Traffic
control had advised that he'd stay above fifteen hundred feet
over the city, but apparently disoriented and thinking himself clear
(03:18):
of the city, he had dropped a five hundred feet,
perhaps sleeping that he was on approach to Newark, or
perhaps trying to get a view of the ground to
orient himself. Suddenly, the fog cleared just enough for Smith
to realize that he was flying in the middle of skyscrapers.
Stan Lomax, a radio sports announcer, was driving to work
when he heard the plane's engines. As he looked up,
he recalled, he yelled, climb you full climb from his
(03:40):
car window. At two hundred miles per hour. The plane
was on a collision course for the eight hundred and
fifty foot RCAID building at thirty Rockefeller Center. Smith veered
at the last moment, averting disaster, but the turn took
him on a collision course with the tallest building on earth,
New York's iconic one hundred two story Empire State Building.
Mort Cooper, a big league pitch who had helped the
(04:01):
Saint Louis Cardinals when two World Series, witnessed the crash
from the sixteenth floor of the Hotel Commodore. He said,
I heard the roar of a plane, picked it up
as it roared between me and the RCA building. Suddenly
it flashed across my mind that it was flying very
low and that it would hit the Empire State Building.
The streets of downtown Manhattan were relatively empty on a
foggy Saturday, but there were some witnesses along Fifth Avenue
(04:23):
and thirty fourth Street who heard the roar of the engines.
They described the plane climbing steeply. William Uttley, vice president
of a public relations firm in the Mercantile Building at
ten East fortieth Street, was quoted in the Scranton, Pennsylvania
Times Tribune. The plane went passed my window at eye level,
or just above it. This office is on the thirty
eighth floor. The engine was apparently going, and it looked
(04:44):
like the pilot was trying to gain altitude. Smith was
apparently trying to climb out of the city, but it
was too late. At nine forty am, old John Feather Merchant,
traveling some two hundred miles an hour, struck the thirty
fourth Street facade of the Empire State Building at an
altitude of nine hundred thirteen feet between the seventy eighth
and seventy ninth floors. Albert Fuller at the b Eltman
(05:08):
Department store across the street told The New York Times
that the floor moved. I looked at the clerk and
I said, isn't that strange? And I thought it couldn't
be an earthquake. Harry Weiskow, on the sixty third floor
of the Empire State Building said there were two terrific explosions.
The whole building shook, and looking out the windows facing down,
we could see flaming debrieze falling down. Daniel Nordon on
(05:31):
the eighteenth floor was thrown out of his chair amid
the glass, with four windows that were blown out in
his office. Twenty four year old bookkeeper althiit Leadbridge was
on the seventy second floor. She said, everything shook. We
ran to the window and looked down with soft flames
below us. We looked up and soft flames above us.
Lethbridge walked down seventy flights of stairs in the dark.
The plane ripped a hole eighteen feet by twenty feet
(05:53):
in the limestone and granite facade of the building. The
Knoxville Journal of Knoxville, Tennessee reported that so tremendous was
the explosion that it ripped away the fog which had
hid in the copless stories of the skyscraper, and for
two minutes the pinnacle of the Chromium Empire State stood
out sharp and clear in the drizzle, while orange red
planes looked around. Many New Yorkers feared it was an
(06:15):
enemy attacked. Miss Weiskoff said that the staff in the
office feared it might have been a buzz bomb that
named for the German V one rocket that had terrified
England during the Blitz. Others saw it may have been
a Japanese bomb balloon, like the one that had killed
the Sunday school teacher and five children in Oregon in
the previous May. The plane struck so hard that the
wings were torn off. One engine shot through the building,
(06:35):
landing on the roof of a building on thirty third
Street and starting a fire that destroyed a Pittouse art studio.
The second engine and parts of the landing gear went
down an elevator shaft were found in the basement. The
body of Albert Perna, the young Navy korman, was also
throwed down the shaft and wasn't found until two days
after the accident. He had been headed to Brooklyn against
all his family over the death of his brother, who
(06:55):
had been killed in combat. The plane's fuel tanks ruptured exploded,
sending a sheet flame into the building. It was lucky
it was a Saturday, otherwise the building would have been
much more crowded. On a normal day, as many as
fifty five hundred people worked in the building, but that
Saturday only About fifteen hundred were thought to be in
the building. The offices where the plane stock were occupied
by the War Relief Services and the National Catholic Welfare Council,
(07:19):
both Catholic organizations dedicated to helping European refugees of the
ongoing war. Some twenty people were working in the offices
that Saturday, coordinating aid for war refugees throughout the world.
Several of those were killed instantly by the flames. Others
crowded in a room hoping to escape the flames and smoke.
One of those was Teresa Willig, who told The New
York Times, I don't think any of us had any
(07:40):
idea what happened. Who'd have thought a plane crowded in
the room with other Catholic War Relief employees, she thought
she was not going to make it. She took off
her rings, a high school graduation ring and a friendship
ring from her boyfriend, and threw them out the window.
She said, I thought I won't be around to have them.
Someone else might as well have use out of them.
One of the workers, a man named Paul Deering, jumped
(08:02):
to escape the fire and was killed. Twenty year old
Betty Lou Oliver was the elevator operator of elevator number six.
She was on the eightieth floor when the plane struck.
The crash caused would be thrown across the building while
suffering from severe burns. Two office workers rendered first aid
and placed her on an elevator to be taken to
the ground floor, where an ambulance was waiting. But parts
(08:23):
of the plane had flown through the elevator shaft and
had sheared off cables. When Betty was placed inside the
elevator on a stretcher, the cable snapped with a sound
like a shot. Betty plummeted seventy five stories. Seventeen year
old Don Maloney was a Coastguard hospital apprentice second class
who was on thirty fourth Street when he saw the
plane crash. He rushed into a nearby pharmacy, telling them
(08:44):
he needed first aid supplies to go help. The pharmacy
gave him bandages, burn ointment, sterile water, and a dozen
syringes with morphine. As he ran in, someone shouted they
needed help in the building's sub basement. Maloney was small,
so it could fit easier into the ruined elevator shaft,
where a girl was screaming it was Betty Lou Oliver. Miraculously,
after falling more than seventy stories, she was still alive.
(09:08):
The elevator's landing was softened by the huge coils of
cable that had piled up beneath it like a spring,
and some experts speculate that the rapid descent might have
caused air pressure to build up under the shaft under
the elevator. The rest of the elevator was ruined, full
of steel shards and broken concrete, all but the corner
that held Oliver. Malina gave her some morphine for the
pain and put burnt woman on her face and stow
(09:29):
bandages on her burns. Her fall, some one thousand feet still,
according to the Guinness Book of World Records, holds a
record for the longest survived elevator fall. To her own surprise,
Theresa Fortier Willig survived. When firemen rescued she and her
friends from the room, She said she was just happy
to be alive. She didn't suspect she'd ever see her
(09:49):
rings again, but they were discovered by rescue workers and
returned to her. She ended up marrying the man who
had given her the friendship ring. Betty Lou Oliver. Before
her seventy five story, Plummet had only been scheduled to
work in the Empire State Building another three days. It
took her eight months to recover from her injuries, but
she moved to Arkansas with her husband. She had three
(10:09):
kids seven grandkids. Passed away in nineteen ninety nine the
age of seventy four.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
And a special thanks to Greg Hengler on the production
and storytelling. And a special thanks to the History Guy.
And if you want more stories of forgotten history, subscribe
to his YouTube channel, The History Guy. History deserves to
be remembered, and my goodness, this story deserves to be remembered.
Many feared an enemy attack when this happened and soon
(10:36):
found out that it was an accident. The story of
the Empire State Building B twenty five crack here on
our American Story
And we continue with our American Stories. Our next story
comes to us from a man who's simply known as
the History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of
thousands of people of all ages on YouTube. The History
Guy is also heard here at our American Stories. In
July of nineteen forty five, a US B twenty five
(00:33):
Mitchell got lost in heavy fog over Manhattan. Here's the
History Guy remembering the B twenty five Empire State building craft.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
The summer of nineteen forty five represented hope for a
war weary nation. Germany had surrendered in May. In the Pacific,
General Douglas MacArthur announced that the Philippines had been liberated,
and in New Mexico, the United States tests at the
bomb that would finally put an end to the war.
There was plenty of reason in July nineteen forty five
(01:08):
for New Yorkers to look forward to a period piece,
but their piece was shattered with a spectacular accident involving
a United States Army Air Force plane and the tallest
building in the world. The morning of Saturday, July eighteenth,
nineteen forty five, and United States Army Air Force's B
twenty five Mitchell was flying from Bedford Army Airfield in
(01:31):
Massachusetts to New Jersey's Newark Airport. At the controls of
the plane was Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith, Junior. The
twenty seven year old Smith was an experienced pilot, a
veteran of more than thirty missions in one thousand combat
hours playing B seventeen bombers over Europe during the war.
The B twenty five was a twin engine bomber, smaller
(01:51):
than the B seventeens that Smith had fun over Europe.
This plane, using callsign five seven seven and nicknamed Old
John feather Merchant, had been converted to five VIPs. Smith
had piled the plane from Sioux Falls Army air Base
in South Dakota and was scheduled to pick up his
committing officer in Newark before continuing back to Sue Falls.
He was accompanied by thirty year old Army Air Force
(02:13):
staff Sergeant Christopher Dimitrovich and nineteen year old Navy machinist
mate Albert Perna, who was hitching a ride from Massachusetts
to see his family in Brooklyn. As the plane approached
New York City, it ran into heavy fog. Smith requested
permission to land at New York's municipal airport to La
Guardia Field, but was advised that the visibility was too
low and told to go on to Newark. The Guardian.
(02:36):
Air traffic control signed off with a warning about visibility
in the fog at the present time. The controller said,
I cannot see the top of the Empire State Building.
The words turned out to be huntingly cryptic. Smith responded,
thank you very much. It's not exactly clear what happened next,
but it seems likely that Smith mistook the East River
(02:57):
for the Hudson. That was a fatal mistake. Had he
turned left as he came by the Chrysler building, he
would have been safe, but disoriented, he turned right, taking
his plane straight over the island of Manhattan. Air Traffic
control had advised that he'd stay above fifteen hundred feet
over the city, but apparently disoriented and thinking himself clear
(03:18):
of the city, he had dropped a five hundred feet,
perhaps sleeping that he was on approach to Newark, or
perhaps trying to get a view of the ground to
orient himself. Suddenly, the fog cleared just enough for Smith
to realize that he was flying in the middle of skyscrapers.
Stan Lomax, a radio sports announcer, was driving to work
when he heard the plane's engines. As he looked up,
he recalled, he yelled, climb you full climb from his
(03:40):
car window. At two hundred miles per hour. The plane
was on a collision course for the eight hundred and
fifty foot RCAID building at thirty Rockefeller Center. Smith veered
at the last moment, averting disaster, but the turn took
him on a collision course with the tallest building on earth,
New York's iconic one hundred two story Empire State Building.
Mort Cooper, a big league pitch who had helped the
(04:01):
Saint Louis Cardinals when two World Series, witnessed the crash
from the sixteenth floor of the Hotel Commodore. He said,
I heard the roar of a plane, picked it up
as it roared between me and the RCA building. Suddenly
it flashed across my mind that it was flying very
low and that it would hit the Empire State Building.
The streets of downtown Manhattan were relatively empty on a
foggy Saturday, but there were some witnesses along Fifth Avenue
(04:23):
and thirty fourth Street who heard the roar of the engines.
They described the plane climbing steeply. William Uttley, vice president
of a public relations firm in the Mercantile Building at
ten East fortieth Street, was quoted in the Scranton, Pennsylvania
Times Tribune. The plane went passed my window at eye level,
or just above it. This office is on the thirty
eighth floor. The engine was apparently going, and it looked
(04:44):
like the pilot was trying to gain altitude. Smith was
apparently trying to climb out of the city, but it
was too late. At nine forty am, old John Feather Merchant,
traveling some two hundred miles an hour, struck the thirty
fourth Street facade of the Empire State Building at an
altitude of nine hundred thirteen feet between the seventy eighth
and seventy ninth floors. Albert Fuller at the b Eltman
(05:08):
Department store across the street told The New York Times
that the floor moved. I looked at the clerk and
I said, isn't that strange? And I thought it couldn't
be an earthquake. Harry Weiskow, on the sixty third floor
of the Empire State Building said there were two terrific explosions.
The whole building shook, and looking out the windows facing down,
we could see flaming debrieze falling down. Daniel Nordon on
(05:31):
the eighteenth floor was thrown out of his chair amid
the glass, with four windows that were blown out in
his office. Twenty four year old bookkeeper althiit Leadbridge was
on the seventy second floor. She said, everything shook. We
ran to the window and looked down with soft flames
below us. We looked up and soft flames above us.
Lethbridge walked down seventy flights of stairs in the dark.
The plane ripped a hole eighteen feet by twenty feet
(05:53):
in the limestone and granite facade of the building. The
Knoxville Journal of Knoxville, Tennessee reported that so tremendous was
the explosion that it ripped away the fog which had
hid in the copless stories of the skyscraper, and for
two minutes the pinnacle of the Chromium Empire State stood
out sharp and clear in the drizzle, while orange red
planes looked around. Many New Yorkers feared it was an
(06:15):
enemy attacked. Miss Weiskoff said that the staff in the
office feared it might have been a buzz bomb that
named for the German V one rocket that had terrified
England during the Blitz. Others saw it may have been
a Japanese bomb balloon, like the one that had killed
the Sunday school teacher and five children in Oregon in
the previous May. The plane struck so hard that the
wings were torn off. One engine shot through the building,
(06:35):
landing on the roof of a building on thirty third
Street and starting a fire that destroyed a Pittouse art studio.
The second engine and parts of the landing gear went
down an elevator shaft were found in the basement. The
body of Albert Perna, the young Navy korman, was also
throwed down the shaft and wasn't found until two days
after the accident. He had been headed to Brooklyn against
all his family over the death of his brother, who
(06:55):
had been killed in combat. The plane's fuel tanks ruptured exploded,
sending a sheet flame into the building. It was lucky
it was a Saturday, otherwise the building would have been
much more crowded. On a normal day, as many as
fifty five hundred people worked in the building, but that
Saturday only About fifteen hundred were thought to be in
the building. The offices where the plane stock were occupied
by the War Relief Services and the National Catholic Welfare Council,
(07:19):
both Catholic organizations dedicated to helping European refugees of the
ongoing war. Some twenty people were working in the offices
that Saturday, coordinating aid for war refugees throughout the world.
Several of those were killed instantly by the flames. Others
crowded in a room hoping to escape the flames and smoke.
One of those was Teresa Willig, who told The New
York Times, I don't think any of us had any
(07:40):
idea what happened. Who'd have thought a plane crowded in
the room with other Catholic War Relief employees, she thought
she was not going to make it. She took off
her rings, a high school graduation ring and a friendship
ring from her boyfriend, and threw them out the window.
She said, I thought I won't be around to have them.
Someone else might as well have use out of them.
One of the workers, a man named Paul Deering, jumped
(08:02):
to escape the fire and was killed. Twenty year old
Betty Lou Oliver was the elevator operator of elevator number six.
She was on the eightieth floor when the plane struck.
The crash caused would be thrown across the building while
suffering from severe burns. Two office workers rendered first aid
and placed her on an elevator to be taken to
the ground floor, where an ambulance was waiting. But parts
(08:23):
of the plane had flown through the elevator shaft and
had sheared off cables. When Betty was placed inside the
elevator on a stretcher, the cable snapped with a sound
like a shot. Betty plummeted seventy five stories. Seventeen year
old Don Maloney was a Coastguard hospital apprentice second class
who was on thirty fourth Street when he saw the
plane crash. He rushed into a nearby pharmacy, telling them
(08:44):
he needed first aid supplies to go help. The pharmacy
gave him bandages, burn ointment, sterile water, and a dozen
syringes with morphine. As he ran in, someone shouted they
needed help in the building's sub basement. Maloney was small,
so it could fit easier into the ruined elevator shaft,
where a girl was screaming it was Betty Lou Oliver. Miraculously,
after falling more than seventy stories, she was still alive.
(09:08):
The elevator's landing was softened by the huge coils of
cable that had piled up beneath it like a spring,
and some experts speculate that the rapid descent might have
caused air pressure to build up under the shaft under
the elevator. The rest of the elevator was ruined, full
of steel shards and broken concrete, all but the corner
that held Oliver. Malina gave her some morphine for the
pain and put burnt woman on her face and stow
(09:29):
bandages on her burns. Her fall, some one thousand feet still,
according to the Guinness Book of World Records, holds a
record for the longest survived elevator fall. To her own surprise,
Theresa Fortier Willig survived. When firemen rescued she and her
friends from the room, She said she was just happy
to be alive. She didn't suspect she'd ever see her
(09:49):
rings again, but they were discovered by rescue workers and
returned to her. She ended up marrying the man who
had given her the friendship ring. Betty Lou Oliver. Before
her seventy five story, Plummet had only been scheduled to
work in the Empire State Building another three days. It
took her eight months to recover from her injuries, but
she moved to Arkansas with her husband. She had three
(10:09):
kids seven grandkids. Passed away in nineteen ninety nine the
age of seventy four.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
And a special thanks to Greg Hengler on the production
and storytelling. And a special thanks to the History Guy.
And if you want more stories of forgotten history, subscribe
to his YouTube channel, The History Guy. History deserves to
be remembered, and my goodness, this story deserves to be remembered.
Many feared an enemy attack when this happened and soon
(10:36):
found out that it was an accident. The story of
the Empire State Building B twenty five crack here on
our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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