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Reading Eunice Kirby's excellent article about New York in VISA 45, I recalled my own visit in 1945.

Eunice is quite right about the best time to visit the Empire State Building: it is as darkness falls and a myriad lights gradually produce an illuminated street plan spread out a quarter-mile below. Mostly that is an orderly gridiron of north-south avenues and east-west streets, so that there is no mistaking Broadway, the 'Great White Way', as it cuts diagonally across that pattern. To the west a band of black shows where the Hudson River separates Manhattan from the lights of Jersey City, and away to the south glows the eerie green figure of the floodlit Statue of Liberty. [Maybe today the view is interrupted by all the newer high-rise buildings, but in 1945 the Empire State towered in splendid isolation, and was the tallest building in the world.]

And yet only a couple of weeks before our visit the building had suffered an aircraft strike - what might be known in present day parlance as a 'friendly' one, for it was an American bomber (a twin-engined B-25 Mitchell) which flew into it in fog. Looking up from Fifth Avenue, the nasty gash in the south side was very evident.

Entering the building, we were confronted by batteries of elevators of various categories: rather as on a railway some were designated for goods, some for local traffic which chugged up floor by floor, and some were expresses. We selected one of the latter, and with buckling knees and much popping in the ears we were whisked up to the 80th floor in 57 seconds. Above that level, where the building narrows, we had to change to a 'tower' elevator, which goes up to the 86th floor, and thence to another inside the 'mooring mast' (reputedly provided for the tethering of airships, though I doubt whether it was ever actually used for the purpose - how ever would the passengers have been transferred?) up to the 102nd floor 1250 feet above the deck.

The change at the 80th floor called for a short walk along a corridor, and through an open doorway we could see the mass of charred and twisted girders where the airplane had struck. The impact had severed the cables of one of the elevators, which had promptly departed for the bottom of the shaft - but such was the efficacy of the retarding mechanism that the girl attendant survived, injured and badly shaken, but still alive. We were not told about any other casualties, though doubtless the B-25 crew and probably the occupants of the offices near the point of impact came off badly.

But what a contrast with '911'! There we were a fortnight after the bang, with most of the building carrying on business as usual, and open to visiting tourists. So what factors were different?

* Well, without a doubt the ESB was more robustly built than the WTC, which probably suffered from 'clever' technology being substituted for good heavyweight steelwork;
* The B-25's impact speed might have been around 150 knots, as compared with perhaps nearer four times that (causing sixteen times the wallop?);
* The bomber was believed to have been preparing to land at a local airfield, and so probably carrying little fuel, whereas the aircraft on 911 had not been airborne for very long and in any event would have had a much greater fuel load to supply the guzzling jet engines.

Progress is not without penalties.

First published in VISA issue 46 (summer 2002).

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