For 41 years (from 1931 to 1972), the Empire State Building (above), with its 102 floors and 381 meters of height, was the tallest building in New York and the United States.
This was during those years (which will hardly return…) when being first in the United States was synonymous with being first worldwide. And for 56 years (from 1945 to 2001), there was a footnote in the history of that famous building that only the curious paid attention to…
In late July 1945, the world was in a kind of military interlude, following the Allied victory over Germany on May 8th and when the operations that would lead to Japan’s inevitable defeat were being concentrated. The first nuclear test had been successful on July 16th at Alamogordo (above), but that was a secret. Instead, the attention of the world’s press was focused on the Potsdam Conference in Germany (below).
In New York, July 28th was a foggy Saturday despite the fact that it was already the height of summer. Around 9:30 a.m., the lieutenant colonel piloting a B-25 bomber (like the one in the photo below), which had taken off from Boston that same morning, requested permission to land at La Guardia Airport. But the airport control tower informed him that visibility conditions were zero. Even so, the pilot insisted on approaching the runway…
It was a mistake. Unable to see a hand in front of his nose , at 9:40 a.m., the B-25 bomber ended up crashing into the north facade of the Empire State Building at the height of the 79th floor, which is located about 300 meters above sea level. Being a Saturday, the building held (fortunately) only about 1,500 people instead of the 10 to 15,000 that would be there on a weekday. As a result of the collision and the fire that immediately broke out (below), there were 14 deaths (3 on the plane, 11 in the building) and 26 injured.
This time, firefighters managed to control the blaze in 40 minutes. They weren’t the only professionals up to the task. Ernie Sisto, a fearless professional photographer, accompanied the rescue teams and, climbing past the two floors where the main impact had occurred, managed, hanging from the parapets and held by the legs by two helpers, to take the photograph that served as the cover of the next day’s New York Times . Important news, but local…
The creation of increasingly better safety standards made the possibility of an accidental aircraft crashing into a building increasingly unlikely. Until September 11, 2001… The events of that day made the July 1945 episode regain importance, and laymen questioned what differences there were between the incidents that made the Empire State Building …if it had survived with a hole in the facade (below) and the WTC towers had collapsed.
There are several explanations, but they begin with the difference in the severity of the impacts. While the B-25 was a bomber that could reach a maximum weight of 19 tons and a top speed of 450 km/h, the Boeing 767-200s (below) that hit the twin towers could weigh up to six times that and fly at twice the speed. The combined effect of these two factors would have made the 2001 impacts between 50 and 150 times more violent than the 1945 impacts..
After 9/11, every aircraft crash into a building is a pretext for yet another moment of media hysteria . As I recall, it happened in 2002 at the Pirelli Building in Milan and again in 2006 at the Belaire Apartments in New York. In both cases, the aircraft were small, and, given all the above, identifying the aircraft is crucial to the damage caused—and to the journalistic relevance!—of the accident.
ifr online
On approach to Congonhas, a small plane also hit a building in Moema and ended up inside the kitchen in the 1970s. Another plane also crashed in New York in 1960 in the collision of United 826 and Twa 266.
In Aichi, Tokoname Airport, which took 5 years to be filled in and built over the sea, without any obstacles, now suffers from a lack of passengers, who prefer the shinkansens from Nagoya, even though there are super express train lines that stop inside Centrair, close to the boarding and disembarking areas, like Narita. It is difficult to reconcile security and the rush of those traveling on business, who prefer airports within cities.
Airports are usually built outside the urban perimeter, then comes the real estate appreciation, the construction of houses and people start to complain about the noise. When the time limit restriction for night operations came into effect, taking off from Congonhas was exhausting, with maximum power and ratio up to 500 ft, then a sudden reduction to 3,000 ft, accelerating afterwards normally. Those who were passengers must have been a little worried about this war on noise operation…
With the advent of the ILS, it cannot be installed for the 35 approach, precisely the one that operates whenever the meteorological conditions are marginal, with buildings that were constructed before the limitations of the safety profile.
Exciting those seconds before landing with heavy rain looking for the runway without grooving…
Source: hinouye.wordpress.com
