Another angle:
I read it as B52 at first and wondered how the building survives
Holy shit all the people just standing there at the hole in the side of the building…
These pictures where taken back when people knew how to party!
Betty had a shit fucking day.
Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver was thrown from her elevator car on the 80th floor and suffered severe burns. First aid workers placed her on another elevator car to transport her to the ground floor, but the cables supporting that elevator had been damaged in the incident, and it fell 75 stories, ending up in the basement.[13] Oliver survived the fall due to the softening cushion of air created by the falling elevator car within this elevator shaft; however, she had suffered a broken pelvis, back and neck when rescuers found her amongst the rubble.[14] This remains the world record for the longest survived elevator fall.
Especially bad when you consider the elevator shouldn’t have fallen in the first place.
Elisha Otis invented his automatic elevator brakes in 1853 – designed to instantly stop cars from falling if the cables snap … and the Empire State Building used Otis safety elevators.
Given how dead simple and reliable the safety mechanism is something must have gone horrible wrong.
A bit more on Betty and the incident:
Tldr; she lived till 74 and had a family and children, so it looks like it all worked out after nearly dying two or three times from the crash/burn/elevator crash.
That’s like one of my worst fears
Record setting go-getter
Man that is some insane photos and damage.
Both because it’s impressive and minor all at once. The fire damage looks far more severe and like it hit multiple floors and yet the exterior stone is barely wedged out of place.
You can even still see the debris of the plane.
This confirms Things were more solid in the past?
Possible. Though a B-25 is smaller and much slower than a 737.
Also weighs much less.
Speed matters more than mass when calculating kinetic energy. A 767 is much, much faster than a B-25.
While you’re right, the MTOW of a B-26 is around 17 tons, the 767 is 150-200 tons.
So there is a factor of around 10 between them, so if the 767 flies 3 times as fast - which it doesn’t, the B-26 cruises at more than 0.35 Mach at close to sea level, and the 767 is not supersonic - that means that the factor from the speed can’t be more than about 3 squared, so 9.
So the factors from the weight and the speed are roughly equal IMO.
Speed matters more than mass when calculating kinetic energy.
Are you sure about that? An air rifle shooting supersonic aluminum pellets has considerably less kinetic energy than a .22 LR bullet, because of the weight of the bullet. Some air rifles actually shoot their projectile faster than a .22, but they have like 10x less energy upon impact.
I mean the modern skyscraper is definitely built very different these days.
The world trade center used hollow exterior support so they could avoid having support columns interrupting the floor plans and large central support columns but you can see what happens when the exterior support gets damaged and heat causes sag from the weight.Advanced techniques usually mean less material and faster build times.
You know what was even more solid? A huge pile of rocks in the shape of a pyramid.B-25: 33,000lbs @ 225 mph
vs
767-200: 300,000 lbs @ 500 mph
so, roughly 10x the weight at 2x the speed
Not the bomber.
Empire State Building: “Oh no, anyways…”
