History Tidbit

On today's date in 1945, a B-25 bomber crashed into the 78^th floor of the Empire State Building.  The three people in the planer died along with 11 people from the building, and 26 people were injured.  The pilot flew into thick fog and descended to regain visibility and found himself surrounded by skyscrapers.

I know the thought that hit me when I first read this was what was a B-25 bomber doing flying over New York City this late in the year 1945.  The war in Europe was over and the war in the Pacific would be over shortly.  I remember when the tire company I work for used to be located across the street in a little four story brick building at 6300 St. John.  We had the bottom floor and the top floor and two other companies occupied the floors in the middle.  As I worked there and talked with people I learned what history I could about the building.

At one point during World War II the little building next door employed women to build sections of B-25 Bombers which would be trucked to the down town airport and assembled by women and then flown by women out east where they were readied to be sent into the war.

First I wanted to remind people of the tremendous effort our grandparents and great grandparents went to in order to retain our freedom and stop tyranny from conquering the globe.  Times are tough but mommy probably isn't building bombers all day or night to put food on the table while daddy is off fighting in the war.  Also hats off to the many women, who before the equal rights movement left their kids and went to work to help keep this country great.  It has been my experience that women call in less, work harder, more focused than their men counter parts.  The only complaint about women I have in general is they are twice as messy and don't clean up after themselves as well as men.  That last part comes from a period of cleaning restrooms for a summer at a major department store (a very nice store), and the woman's restrooms were always ten times more disgusting than the men's rooms.

The plane was probably just being brought from one airport to another for transport.  Especially since it only had a crew of three.  I never knew the Empire State Building had been hit by a plane until today!  Men need to work harder to keep up with the women, and the women need to tidy up when they are done in the restroom because somebody does come in and clean it later.  I shudder at the memories!

Posted in: Empire State Building B-25 Bomber