First, I saw a black and white photograph of people on the streets looking upward, their faces giving no hint of what they were seeing.
The photo beneath it showed a minister in collar presumably giving last rites.
Then another showed the small figures of firefighters combing through ashes near a large structure of charred metal.
The final photo told the more human story of what the curious faces and twisted metal could not: A woman praying for lost souls.
The photos were shot by photographer Hans Knopf, whose name I had seen stamped on the back of photos of jazz performers Leadbelly and Josh White and Ann Robinson at New York’s Village Vanguard in the 1940s. Those were good-times photos, these obviously were not.
On the back of one of the current photos was handprinted: “PLANE (BOMBER) HITS EMPIRE STATE BUILDING – 1945-.”
I learned that one of the most tragic accidents in New York City history occurred on July 28, 1945, nearly 56 years before the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center buildings. The earlier one occurred during the final days of World War II; Germany had finally been defeated and the Japanese would be surrendering two months later.
Capt. William F. Smith had lost his way through dense the fog and crashed into the upper floors of the Empire State Building, then the tallest building in the world. That’s what had captured the attention of the crowd – many of them children – and induced the woman to pray and a sailor beside her to stand as if at attention.
Smith had taken off that Saturday morning in a B-25 bomber on a routine mission with two servicemen in a flight from Bedford Army Air Base in Massachusetts to La Guardia Airport in New York. It was foggy, and the weather hadn’t gotten any better when he approached the New York area. Smith, an experienced pilot who had flown 50 combat missions in Europe during the war, asked for clearance to land but was told not to because of zero visibility. Several sites mentioned that he was headed to the Newark Airport in New Jersey.
“He ignored it … So he started to make a little bit of a turn that brought him over midtown Manhattan, and as he straightened out, the clouds broke up enough for him to realize he was flying among skyscrapers,” said Arthur Weingarten, author of a 1977 book about the incident titled “The Sky is Falling.” Weingarten was among those children on the streets that morning. A 10-year-old, he was in Manhattan with his father.
Smith crashed into the north side of the Empire State Building near the 78 to 80th floors, in particular the offices of the War Relief Services department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference on the 79th floor. One of the plane’s engines burst out the other side and landed in a penthouse apartment across the street. Another piece tore through an elevator cable, sending the elevator and its operator down 79 floors (she survived). Eleven people were killed: 8 in the offices, Smith and the two other servicemen on the plane.
“In the other side of the office, all I could see was flames,” said Therese Fortier Willig, then a 20-year-old who worked for the relief organization. “Mr. Fountain was walking through the office when the plane hit the building and he was on fire — I mean, his clothes were on fire, his head was on fire. Six of us managed to get into this one office that seemed to be untouched by the fire and close the door before it engulfed us. There was no doubt that the other people must have been killed.”
The building was opened for business two days later, on Monday. The crash led to the passage a year later of an act that allowed citizens to sue the federal government (with restrictions), retroactive to 1945.
