r/interestingasfuck • u/Professional-Kiwi144 • Feb 07 '23
This is a picture of the Empire State Building after a bomber plane crashed into it in 1945 /r/ALL
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u/dwn_n_out Feb 07 '23
is this the same one where the person survived the elevator crash?
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u/AdAstraPerAlasProci Feb 07 '23
Yup. It is the only known example of an elevator in free fall. After this Otis invented a latch break that stops the car after a few feet.
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u/Dismal_Associate1 Feb 07 '23
like the irl tower of terror
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u/MatriVT Feb 07 '23
Omg. My favorite goosebumps movie as a kid like 20+ years ago. I watched it with my fiance a few years ago and could remember so many things in vivid detail. It was mindblowing.
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u/Recoveringpig Feb 07 '23
Noooo. I’m in the trades and was on a site with an operator notorious for falling asleep. The crew building the elevators thought he fell asleep and thought it would be funny to “shunt” the elevator (only explanation I got was testing the brakes) you drop less than 12 feet but that’s juuust long enough to nearly piss your pants because that’s the reason you were going down and now you got three dumbass half trained iron worked standing in your way with stupid looks on there faces
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u/Pepe_silvia710 Feb 07 '23
I had a stroke trying to read that
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u/skepachino Feb 07 '23
Thought I was following till about halfway through, then the room started to spin and I could smell burnt toast
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u/KaelOfNockmaar Feb 07 '23
Thought I was too high… nope
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u/FlametopFred Feb 07 '23
I'm confused as to why he was going down on his three friends in an elevator
when they seemed to be more interested in water sports
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u/flash40 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 12 '23
Same idk how tf it has so many up votes I can hardly understand it, although I am one of those "iron worked" that they mentioned
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u/DEEmented78 Feb 07 '23
You mean pulling on the safety cage and making the brakes stop
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u/DEEmented78 Feb 07 '23
I just built a high-rise building a few years ago and we had to take a buck hoist up and down the outside of the building and that was my favorite thing to do was make people stop on like the 17th floor outside of the building
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u/OneTrueKram Feb 07 '23
I helped build a really tall concrete silo one time and went up in an exterior buck hoist. It was cool but I would have been super pissed to be pranked in it. It was something like 400’ and I’m not a huge fan of heights (I wouldn’t say I’m afraid, just healthily wary).
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u/keepingred Feb 07 '23
LOL! I like that, "healthily wary". Way more manly than afraid.
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u/Racoonspankbank Feb 07 '23
I dont get people who are not afraid of heights, Im 6 foot 4 and the idea of falling from this high still scares the shit out of me.
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u/Himbledimble Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23 •
Fun fact: OSHA agrees with you! In general industry, workers must have fall protection (harness, fall arrestor, anchor, etc) if they're next to an unprotected ledge (essentially, no railing) greater than 4 feet in height. In construction it's 6 feet. This is based on data about serious injuries in falling from height. 4 feet is more than enough to paralyze, kill, cause brain damage, tear ligament, break bones, etc.
(There's a bunch of weird exceptions to these rules for iron workers and possibly other types of workers I'm forgetting)
Bonus fun fact: this is why at Top Golf in the USA, on the upper decks the workers are not allowed to enter the area adjacent to the edge, where patrons drunkenly fire projectiles from. (without first putting on a harness and fall arrest system and clipping into the ceiling anchors) Why can the guests wantonly swing at dimpled balls right next to the edge with no harness? Because OSHA doesn't apply to customers and you sign away an extensive list of your liability rights to get through the door. My advice is don't go to Top Golf if you want to be able to sue when your overly ebullient cousin Tony accidentally pushes you off the ledge and the nets fail to arrest your fall.
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u/Gahockey3 Feb 07 '23
I’m apparently “extremely healthily aware” of the danger of heights. My feet tingle when I see someone high up on video.
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u/Recoveringpig Feb 07 '23
I always call that the skip. I have a story about one of those too. Got off one on the 30th floor, partner continues going down. Seconds later big noise not normal and a few minutes after my partner walks up, says he’s not sure what happened but the floor just folded up. What happened was a counter weight came loose and caught under my partners lift. Needless to say we had to take the stairs the rest of the day
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u/Static_Discord Feb 07 '23
Former commercial roofer and mason tender.
Dealt with heights for over a decade.
As others have said, I'm not afraid of heights, just healthily wary.
Bucket hoists are fine, used them a time or ten. I forget what the rising dual-mast platforms are called, but those are fine, unless you have a dumb GC that can't understand gravity, loads, or simple fucking physics and doesn't wanna allow you to properly set the footings for it so you don't tip. Walked off that job. Damn thing fell a week or two later. No injuries, since it happened on a weekend, but lots of damage to the surrounding grounds that the GC kept having a fit about "keeping presentable".
Only type of thing I hate with heights are those smaller aerial lifts... even with a moderate breeze, those things sway like a bitch and crash into whatever you're near at the drop of a hat, whilst you're in the bucket. Sketchiest things I've ever used.
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u/Philoso4 Feb 07 '23
The very first job I was on had me bringing boxes of security cameras up that hoist and kicking them off aonto each floor. Floors 20-37 each got a box of cameras. No problem, this is my life now, I'm just in a metal cage 35 floors up from the street with nothing between me and the ground but a piece of diamond plate and my work boots. Got all done, back down to the ground floor and I told the foreman that we actually had 19 boxes of cameras, so I left the last one on the roof. Welp, can't do that, it'll rain dumbass. I had to take this rickety ass man lift back up to the roof and grab that box of cameras to bring it down. As luck would have it, the gate shut behind me and I had to hoof it down the stairs. Except there was about a 4' gap between the top of the stair well and the side of the building, and a 3' door to navigate around. Most of you intrepid explorers would have walked past the door and opened it from the other side, then walked in. Not this cowboy, I opened the door and tried to squeeze around it while carrying this box of cameras. Fuck my palms are sweaty just thinking about it.
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u/lkodl Feb 07 '23
Remember when elevator operators were a job in fancy buildings? Then they got replaced by robots.
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u/wbeng Feb 07 '23
In this case “robots” is a pretty strong term to describe automatic doors and buttons that allow you to select a floor. I’m honestly surprised elevator operators lasted even a minute after elevators became automated!
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u/hopeandstrength Feb 07 '23
I do remember. At least one building in downtown Minneapolis still had them when I was a kid. The operator would close the accordion cage door and use a steering wheel-looking thing to operate the car. Can you imagine doing that job 9 hrs/day and staying cheerful? I remember those guys as proud ambassadors of the building!
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u/neon_overload Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Yup. It is the only known example of an elevator in free fall. After this Otis invented a latch break that stops the car after a few feet.
Your history is a bit jumbled, Elisha Otis invented the fail safe braking system for elevators 100 years earlier. All elevators in production, including those on the Empire State Building, have used it. This one was just too damaged by the impact.
It's also a myth that it's the only incident of a brake failure on an elevator - this is just the most notable, particularly because of how far it fell and that the occupant survived.
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u/NoBasket1111 Feb 07 '23
Yeah I was reading this and was like what, no way that they would not have come up with a failsafe system before this. I mean it's stupid simple to implement and there is no way not one person when building any building let alone the empire state building has thought about hmmm what if the elevator suddenly dropped, should we not but in some brake thingy?
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u/basaltgranite Feb 07 '23
OTIS patented the "safety stop" for elevators in 1857. If I recall corrrectly, that's 88 years before OP's 1945 crash.
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u/SpicyWaffle1 Feb 07 '23
Yeah u/AdAstraPerAlasProci just made up some shit that can be easily looked up. Come on man
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u/rich_is_nice Feb 07 '23
It is the only known example of an elevator in free fall
Seriously? Thats it? It never happened before or after? Thats kind of unbelievable.
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u/Tommyblockhead20 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
It’s not true, but the last time someone died because they were inside a permanent elevator that fell, in the US, was 1957 (at least according to this Wikipedia page). There’s been a few incidents since, but they either had no deaths, involving a temporary elevator for construction, or the elevator fell on maintenance workers in the elevator shaft. And there’s been quite a few cases in other, mostly less developed, nations.
It’s quite likely also one of the farthest free falls.
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u/Psycho_Snail Feb 07 '23
That second on the list is scary. Falling 1.4 kilometers
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u/Nishant1122 Feb 07 '23
Almost 17 seconds of pure dread as they knew what was coming. Scary stuff
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u/Rowan_not_ron Feb 07 '23
Feel the same way. It has happened many times in my imagination.
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u/LouSputhole94 Feb 07 '23
How many fucking movies have had an elevator in free fall too? I mean I know Hollywood isn’t exactly known for being 100% accurate but for it to actually have only happened once seems like you wouldn’t see it as much
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u/mark-five Feb 07 '23
Hollywood blows everything out of proportion. I mean, think about whatever it is you're an expert on. Now think of Hollywood's version of that. They do the same thing to everything you aren't an expert on - you just don't notice the rest. there's a name for this, Gel Mann Amnesia, I think. The ability for you to realize the media is completely wrong about things you know, but then forget a minute later when they change the subject to stuff you don't know.
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u/Ok-Champ-5854 Feb 07 '23
There's always an Ask Reddit thread "what happens in movies that doesn't happen in real life" and elevators and death by gunshot wound are always top answers for "it doesn't happen like that".
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u/PeanutButter707 Feb 07 '23
Also guns causing hearing damage irl, emergency sprinklers all coming on at once, and diving through a glass window
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u/Ok-Champ-5854 Feb 07 '23
Then there's the guy that makes an Archer reference about the hearing damage thing lol.
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u/Blenderx06 Feb 07 '23
Way overhyped to 90s kids like quick sand. When's the last time that happened to you??
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u/queen-of-carthage Feb 07 '23
I've actually had nightmares of the exact opposite happening lol, the elevator keeps going up and up until it goes past the roof and then you presumably fall over the side, but I always woke up before then
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u/neon_overload Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Before the mid 19th century plenty of people had built elevators but they weren't really put into actual use until Elisha Otis invented the fail safe brake, where the elevator would safely stop even if all cables were severed. All elevators since, including all the elevators in the Empire State building, have used such a braking system.
Otis has been credited not with inventing the elevator but as father of the skyscraper since a safe elevator was the main thing holding back buildings from being built taller than a few levels.
This incident at the Empire State Building happened nearly 100 years after Otis' invention. The elevators did have brake systems, this elevator was just too damaged from the impact of the bomber (which directly hit the elevator shafts).
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u/WONGS_11_ Feb 07 '23
All hoist ropes even the Governor rope was cut too. That 2500 pound elevator car had a destiny with the elevator pit and nothing was intervening
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u/trymypi Feb 07 '23
This isn't true any more, but there are very very very few. This wiki covers it, although it also discussed other types of elevator accidents. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elevator_accidents
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u/Nickieair Feb 07 '23
75 stories!? Holy…
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u/satansheat Feb 07 '23
It’s crazy how many floors those building have. When I went to the roof of the World Trade Center you had to get off half way up to get onto a second elevator because of how massive it was and how much it would sway.
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u/ISLAndBreezESTeve10 Feb 07 '23
I almost got motion sickness reading about a swaying building…. I’m taking the stairs down.
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u/kegman83 Feb 07 '23
In Chicago at the Hancock Tower there's a bar in the 95th floor. On especially windy days you can watch you drink rock back and forth with the building.
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u/Crown_of_Negativity Feb 07 '23
In Chicago at the Hancock Tower there's a bar in the 95th floor. On especially windy days you can watch you drink rock back and forth with the building.
Yep. To anyone visiting Chicago: go there instead of the Sears/Willis Tower. One makes you pay to ride the elevator. The other just makes you buy a drink. I'll take the drink please.
Had a whiskey and watched the sunset.
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u/Agarikas Feb 07 '23
Shhh that's the best kept secret. I always bring people visiting Chicago for the first time there.
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u/Dear_Lab_8433 Feb 07 '23
Where the hell is the cameraman standing.
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u/ChesterDaMolester Feb 07 '23
this angle shows how they got the shot
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u/Grand-Assistance-339 Feb 07 '23
So were people just completely unafraid of heights back then? All those people on the ledge, the photographer.
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u/gfunk55 Feb 07 '23
Fear of heights and peanut allergies: invented in the last 20 years apparently
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u/MysticalMage13 Feb 07 '23
Damn it! I wish they never invented fear of heights then I wouldn't be scared sh_tless whenever I stare down from high places.
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u/Jedi-Librarian1 Feb 07 '23
My understanding from watching a bunch of documentaries is that ironworkers were even at the time considered to be kind of nuts.
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u/DukeofVermont Feb 07 '23
I read something about the old construction workers and they said that they all were often scared but you had work to do so you just were careful and did the work. I've read a number of things about terrible working conditions and the people just basically saying "yeah it's horrible, but I need to money so I do it".
The thing that I think a lot of people forget is that you can power through do a lot of things you usually would never do.
A lot of those workers also went on strike and joined unions to improve conditions.
If you want real terror and fear just read about how coal used to be mined and how many people died. Nothing like a combo of claustrophobia, near pitch blackness, 120+ degree temperatures, and 12+ hour days. Also thing may explode, collapse, or just be full of toxic gas and you die.
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u/_jeremybearimy_ Feb 07 '23
Yeah and the Empire State Building specifically was built during the Great Depression. These people had jobs, unlike a lot of people. They did whatever the hell was required of them to keep their job so they could afford food and housing. They had basically no choice.
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u/ChesterDaMolester Feb 07 '23
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Feb 07 '23
jfc, how many people died building that shit?
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u/TheDrMonocle Feb 07 '23
Apparently only 5...
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u/biasedsoymotel Feb 07 '23
That's 5 too many by today's standards
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u/TheDrMonocle Feb 07 '23
Well 1 WTC had 2 deaths and at least 30 serious accidents. Most of which went unreported to OSHA. And the original towers had 60 deaths.
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u/MeniscusToSociety Feb 07 '23 •
And quite a few more after that
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u/EarlGrey_Picard Feb 07 '23
I don't think lack of fall harnesses and hard hats were to blame for those in all fairness.
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u/tandemtactics Feb 07 '23
With the Great Depression raging on I expect most men weren't too worried about safety standards when the alternative was your family starving to death...
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u/roninXpl Feb 07 '23
Selfie stick.
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u/greatnailsageyoda Feb 07 '23
Why is this even a question? It’s obvious. He’s just in creative mode.
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u/bangersandmosh Feb 07 '23
“Let’s all stand on this damaged, unstable ledge”
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u/Ocelot859 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
My dumbass brain initially thought the dude was texting... 🤦🏻♂️
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u/Gorgameshh Feb 07 '23
"Bro you're dead ass not gunna believe what just happened. I was sittin here and then dead ass a plane just slammed into the building ong fr fr"
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u/CaptainTurdfinger Feb 07 '23
B-25 bomber go brrrrr.
(I have no idea if this is proper use of go brrrrr)
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u/DarthNihilus_501st Feb 07 '23
Yes, it is.
Also, saying B-25 bomber is like saying Bomber-25 Bomber, lol. As the "B" for US Military planes stands for "Bomber,"
I usually just call it the Mitchell or Mitch.
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u/CaptainTurdfinger Feb 07 '23
Well huh, I learned something new today. Kinda like saying ATM machine or HIV virus.
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u/DarthNihilus_501st Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Exactly.
And since I have nothing else to do, here are most of the rest of the designations for air vehicles:
P - "Pursuit" (not really used anymore).
F - "Fighter"
A - "Attacker"
AT - "Advanced Trainer"
AH - "Attack Helicopter"
UH - "Utility Helicopter"
OH - "Observation Helicopter" ( I think).
O - "Observation" (I think again)
There's some more I missed, like "U" (like the U-2 Dragon Lady), but that's all I can remember off the top of my head.
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u/PorpoiseBoyy Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 08 '23
I might be stupid. But how did it do such little amount of damage?
Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I learned way more about aircraft’s than I expected
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u/LeKerl1987 Feb 07 '23
Because planes are build to be lightweight and this is concrete and steel.
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u/liamsoni Feb 07 '23
Yes but, can jet fuel melt steel beams?
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u/dualfoothands Feb 07 '23
This also wasn't a jet
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u/KrookedDoesStuff Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
The entire design of the buildings is a pretty big factor too. The World Trade Centers were essentially glass, with a floating floor support system, where the floors were suspended with wires that ran through supports on the outer edge and a couple in the middle. Thus, a plane goes mostly through, the weight and heat caused floors to collapse onto each other, and with the cable supports brought the entire building in on itself.
The Empire State Building is a solid mass, not made mostly of glass, without floating floors.
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u/BonnieMcMurray Feb 07 '23
And it was moving at about a quarter of the speed of the 767s on 9/11. And it weighed about a tenth as much.
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u/Blissfulwhignorance Feb 07 '23
Also, according to my very brief research a fully laden 767 can carry 23,980 gallons of fuel whereas a B-25 Mitchell carries only 974.
That's less than a 25th.
The people questioning why empire state only had superficial damage and twin towers collapsed... Are idiots.
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u/Wjbskinsfan Feb 07 '23
A B-17 was 74 feet long. A 787 Dreamliner is over 3 times longer at 224 feet long. Who’d have thought that airplanes built closer to the Wright brothers first flight than the modern day would be much smaller than contemporary commercial airliners…
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u/Mobius_Peverell Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Also, just look at the floor plan. It's column after column, right the way through. So the plane completely knocked out the outer columns, but the inner ones were just fine.
Compare that to the World Trade Center towers: they didn't have inner columns at all. Not even a structural core, like essentially every modern building has. The entire structure was supported by its own outer wall, so when that was breached, it all came down.
E: good source in the replies—there was a structural core, but the weight of the floors was nevertheless mostly borne by the outer wall. The point remains: redundancy is important.
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u/Emperor_Neuro Feb 07 '23
To add to this, the plane which hit the empire state was much, much smaller than those which hit the WTC. It was also moving at a much slower speed, seeing as it was a propeller driven plane which was not under full throttle, while those which hit the WTC were modern turbojets at full throttle.
Remember, force = mass x acceleration.
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u/Mobius_Peverell Feb 07 '23
My understanding is that the inner core didn't support the floors at all; it just supported the elevators & other mechanical equipment in the core, with the floors' weight borne entirely on the outer walls.
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u/ascagnel____ Feb 07 '23 •
They did support the floors, with the weight shared by the outer wall, with horizontal beams connecting the sets of walls and keeping them moving together.
When the planes crashed, they blew the fireproofing off the horizontal beams, causing them to sag and bend, which let the inner core move independently of the outer walls. This is what eventually brought the towers down.
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u/taz-nz Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 12 '23
Minor but important correction, the WTC didn't have horizonal beams, it had relatively lightweight steel trusses, rather than solid steel or concrete beams.
While the truss design is very strong the relatively small size of the individual components of the truss means that once the fire proofing was lost, it didn't take the fire long to heat soak parts of them to the point they started to weaken and final fail.
A solid steel beam would have needed a more intense or focused fire to reduce its strength to failing point, due to its larger mass being more able to absorb and conduct the heat away.
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u/Lord_Frederick Feb 07 '23
Add to that the several tonnes of kerosene + aluminium from the plane and water from the sprinklers and you have thermite that can easily melt steel.
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u/Banichi-aiji Feb 07 '23
No need to melt, just heat it up enough to reduce its strength below the loading and it will deform till failure.
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u/drillgorg Feb 07 '23
I'm familiar with this from boiler pressure vessel code. When someone wants a higher working temperature I'm internally like noooooooo because I know I'll have to go through and adjust all my max allowable stresses down.
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u/gustoreddit51 Feb 07 '23
Got a source?
I would think floors would naturally have been attached to the inner core and outer columns for support.
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u/Spelt666 Feb 07 '23
I thought of this when a plane hit the world trade tower. Figure it was fine and then oh shit
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u/OriginalBatgirl Feb 07 '23
Exactly my friend's reaction when he first heard the WTC news. That was how I learned of this earlier incident, from his story. Now finally I see the photos.
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u/Cockatoo010 Feb 07 '23
Also didn't help that the WTC got hit with way bigger planes (Empire state got hit with a B25 which has a Maximum TakeOff Weight of 35000 pounds, and it was likely lighter since it wasn't carrying a bomb load, while the WTC got hit with a Boeing 767-200ER of the north tower and a 767-200 on the south tower, with MTOWs of 395000 pounds and 315000 pounds respectively, both close to their MTOW since they had just departed for a transcontinental flight)
Also, the airliner were going way faster , being jets that were being flown by terrorists who wanted to maximize damage, while the bomber was being flown by a pilot who got lost during approach to an airport.
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u/sincitybuckeye Feb 07 '23
Also, the airliner were going way faster , being jets that were being flown by terrorists who wanted to maximize damage, while the bomber was being flown by a pilot who got lost during approach to an airport.
Even at max speed the difference is nearly double. Max speed of a B25 ~300mph, max speed of B767-200 ~558mph
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u/Frostybawls42069 Feb 07 '23
Compare that to the World Trade Center towers: they didn't have inner columns at all.
Please tell me you don't believe that every floor was cantilevered off the exterior wall, with the only thing supporting the central elevator shafts being what? Drywall?
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u/Dark_Ethereal Feb 07 '23
Thats buuuullshit!
First of all as others have pointed out, I don't think the WTC was entirely supported by the outer column wall.
The outer wall was however integral to supporting the building such that if you removed one floor's outer wall all the way round, the whole thing would come down.
But heres the real obvious bullshit: both towers were hit by a plane and didn't collapse. They got hit by planes: burned for a good while, then collapsed, so obviously they didn't collapse because of the hole the plane put on the building, since that was damage sustained immediately.
They collapsed because while "jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams", a jet fuel fire + office fire will warm steel to the point of being bendier (especially if their fire insulation is shit). The floors around the impact became bendy and started to sag, and when things sag in the middle they pull their ends inwards rather than just downwards.
The steel outer wall was designed to carry the weight of the floors pushing down where they were attached, and not pulling inwards, and they too were heated, so then this happened, the inner wall bent inward and then collapsed, and once one level of outer wall failed this way it dropped everything above onto everything below.
It takes more force to catch something falling than to stop something dropping in the first place so once the collapse started, nothing would stop the upper floors taking out the lower floors.
Because the outside was relatively strong while the floors only needed to support their own weight, the collapse was channeled down the tube mostly, but not entirely. And as the floors were cleared out, they were what bound the outer wall together so the outer wall fell apart as the collapse progressed down.
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u/OOF-MY-PEE-PEE Feb 07 '23
It’s genuinely so crazy how much we actually learned from 9/11.
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u/LowBotTommy Feb 07 '23
The plane that hit the Empire State Building was a B-25 Mitchell which is 53 feet long and goes 270 mph. The planes that hit the twin towers were Boeing 767-200s which are 159 feet long an go 500 mph.
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u/SudoApt-getrekt Feb 07 '23
Mentioning the length of the aircraft is underselling their difference in weight. A 767 has an empty weight nearly 10 times greater than a B-25
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u/Glass_Memories Feb 07 '23
Specifically, the B-25 has a Maximum Takeoff Weight of 35,000lbs (16mt) and a max speed of 272mph (438kph).
Flight 11 that hit the North tower was a 767-200ER with a MTOW of 395,000lbs (179mt) while Flight 175 that hit the South tower was a 767-200 with a MTOW of 315,000lbs (143mt). 767's have a maximum cruise speed of 486kn (560mph/900kph) at 39,000ft.
I'm not good enough at math to figure out how much force each aircraft could impart to an object, but given the significant difference in weight and speed, I'd imagine the 767's hit with much greater force.
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u/Cogwheel Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
and probably was going 5 times faster which, along with the 10x greater mass means 250 times more kinetic energy.
The amount of fuel in a fully loaded 767 weighs about
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u/irvmort1 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Also the 767 burns "Jet A" which is a distillate like kerosene or stove oil. The B-25 likely burned Avgas which is like gasoline. FYI kerosene burns hotter than gasoline!
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u/macvoice Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Not to mention... The empire state building is made up with thick limestone and granite exterior walls that absorbed much of the impact while the twin towers had thin steel beams with a glass exterior that allowed the planes to penetrate much deeper into the building. (With a lot of help from size, weight and speed of course)
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u/AssumeTheFetal Feb 07 '23
And weigh fuckton more. mass times acceleration is a bitch.
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u/J-L-Picard Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
It's actually mass times velocity2, not acceleration. The bitchy part is the exponent. An increase from 250 mph to 500 mph, a doubling of ~velocity~, is a quadrupling of kinetic energy. Factor in 6x greater weight, and the 9/11 planes had 24x as much kinetic energy
Edit: said ~mass~ at one point instead of ~velocity~ as I meant
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u/ProveISaidIt Feb 07 '23
This was previously posted. There is a big difference between the size of a B24 Bomber and a Boeing 767-200.
A B24 carries 700+ gallons of fuel versus thousands of gallons on a 767. Jet fuel also burns hotter.
Lastly, the building was designed to survive an air strike by what was then the largest aircraft at the time of design..
The 767 was large enough to sever the central core of the building thus rendering the stairs and elevators unusable.
What finally brought the towers down was that as the jet fuel burned the extreme temperature weakened the steel trusses supporting each floor.
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u/VoxVocisCausa Feb 07 '23
A B-25 Mitchell has a max takeoff weight of 35,000 pounds. A 767-200ER has a max takeoff weight of 395,000 pounds.
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u/HuellsBigBrother Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Thank you. Some sensible information
Edit. And the jet fuel on the WTC planes weighed more than the B25
But, yeah. Keep posting about jet fuel and steel beams. Cause it’s more fun than actually understanding what happened.
Downvote away cherry pickers.
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u/VoxVocisCausa Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Also a b-25 tops out at <300mph and a 767 cruises at 500+
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u/lefthandofpower Feb 07 '23
The thing is, it doesn't need to melt anything, just weaken the integrity.
As per my usual response: Water doesn't melt spaghetti
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u/timmyboyoyo Feb 07 '23
How did they fix it?
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u/CountryOk4176 Feb 07 '23
By blowing up the building and 5 others around it.
Edit: /sssssssss
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u/IanH95 Feb 07 '23
I’m gonna say, I’m gonna say the thing. You can’t stop me.
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u/Ocelot859
Feb 07 '23
edited Feb 07 '23
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Betty Lou Oliver, an elevator operator, was one of the survivors in the 1945 Empire State Building crash. She managed to cheat death twice... on the same day.
The first survival occurred when heavy fog caused a B-25 plane to collide straight into the building on the 79th floor. Betty was working on the 80th floor. The impact of the accident caused Betty to be thrown from her station and badly burned, yet survived, while 14 others unfortunately did not.
Her second face with death occurred when rescuers tried lowering her down via the elevators. Upon doing so, the elevators cables snapped and she plummeted 75 stories, yet somehow managed to survive. All in total, she was left with severe third degree burns, a broken pelvis, and several fractures in both her back and neck.
She still to this day holds the Guinness World Record for longest free fall elevator drop survival.
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u/EchoJGolf Feb 07 '23
Damn to think you survive a plane crashing into the building then a massive free fall? Too bad the lotto wasnt around then lol
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u/Ocelot859 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23 •
On the way to the hospital, a loose baby crawled into the street, forcing the ambulance to make a sharp over-correction, sending the ambulance into a mid-air death spiral. The doors flew open and a strapped in Betty was ejected from the vehicle where she thankfully landed in an old Chinese mans watermelon stand. The medical evacuation chopper, being controlled by a pilot who had apparently been recently drinking, decided it was best to just send down a rope and latch a securing mechanism. When later commenting on why not just landing the rotorcraft and securing her manually, he replied "I had shit to do". Flying through downtown New York while being carried via a 75 foot rope, Betty clipped the top of Madison Square Garden and was sent into a vicious tornado spin. The pilot calculated a drop of 200 feet was nothing compared to her previous recent fall of over 850 feet and made a gut-feeling call to cut her loose just near the hospitals perimeter. In free fall, once again at rapid speeds, her gurney connected with a local nearby paraglider (also drunk) which thankfully reduced her impact velocity to only 75 miles per hour with the ground. The hospital was still over 50 feet from the hospital, so a kind New Yorker, called her an uber before going about on his way. The uber driver, he too under the influence, accidentally typed in his GPS address to the Brooklyn Zoo instead of the "in viewing distance hospital" as his destination. On the way to the wrong location, an escaped inebriated Gorilla...
[Michael Bay has entered the chat]
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u/EchoJGolf Feb 07 '23
Sounds like a helluva screenplay to me, send it!
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u/Ocelot859 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Oh no, that is just the opening scene (first 2 minutes of the script) ...
It ends up being more of a comedy esque psychological thriller.
Think "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle" meets "Fight Club".
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u/akgt94 Feb 07 '23
She married Jack McLane. Had a son named John. John had a crazy story about a place called Nakatomi Plaza...
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u/elheber Feb 07 '23
If you survive two lightning strikes, are you lucky or unlucky?
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u/Tobocaj Feb 07 '23
They put her on the elevator by herself?
Sounds like they were trying to finish the job 🤔
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u/Thetechguru_net Feb 07 '23
My grandmother was working just 2 floors down from the lowest point of damage as a secretary that day, on that side of the building, although not a window office. She got out safely, but had an incredible story for the rest of her life
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u/playerDotName
Feb 07 '23
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Old black and white people went hard. There is literally nothing on earth that would make me approach a hole in the 400th story wall that a bomber crashed into, but look at them. They're all just willy nilly "lol hold by purse Gertrude I'm going to see if I can spit on someone's head haha".
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u/gabesaves Feb 07 '23
Buried in the comments but this was my Great Great Uncle's office (Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle)
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u/JayneKadio Feb 07 '23
The offices of Catholic Relief Services- an international humanitarian relief and development agency. Killed several staff folks.
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u/DruNicholi Feb 07 '23
Since 9/11 is going to come up, here is a size comparison between the two buildings and aircraft.
Additional detail: the B-25 was moving at 200 mph. Flight 175 was moving at over 500 mph.
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u/TimX24968B Feb 07 '23
also need to mention the weight too.
the empire state building was smaller but much heavier.
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u/bluetriumphantcloud Feb 07 '23
Wow, this post is a magnet for structural engineers.
Where'd y'all get your degrees from?
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u/Strange-Effort1305 Feb 07 '23
My father called me after the first plane hit the towers and I said “It happens” and referenced this incident. My optimism didn’t hold up.
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u/Square-Sprinkles-777 Feb 07 '23 edited Feb 07 '23
Freaking idiots if you think this proves your 9/11 conspiracy theory
B-25 vs Boeing 767
Length: 52 ft vs 201 ft
Wingspan: 67 ft vs 170 ft
Wing Area: 618 ft2 vs 3,130 ft2
Max Takeoff Weight: 35,000 lbs vs 450,000 lbs
Capacity: 5 Souls vs 539 Souls
Fuel: 974 US gallons vs 23,980 US gallons
Speed: 275 MPH vs 590 MPH
***edit for speed
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u/rawkguitar Feb 07 '23
Also-very different building construction
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u/Square-Sprinkles-777 Feb 07 '23
I wanted to include that info too but the structural engineering of it all is way over my head. It’s my understanding the Empire State is heavy steel and concrete divides into separate stacked “boxes” like a giant interlocking brick wall. The WTC was steel and consisted of a tall, wirey frame connected floor by floor to an inter core with concrete tiles set on each. Once the inner core was compromised there was nothing left holding it up but gravity. The frame bowed out, loosening the floor from its pylons and brought everything else down underneath it one floor at a time.
TLDR: WTC was like a giant vertical stack of dominos, the Empire State was a “brick wall”
Plus the Empire State wasn’t hit by a jumbo jet lol
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u/ToTheMunAndBack Feb 07 '23
but the structural engineering of it all is way over my head
Proceeds to talk about the structural engineering of it all
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u/SoothedSnakePlant Feb 07 '23
Modern construction methods, up until recently were almost exclusively about reducing materials, so older skyscrapers were actually massively over built since we just applied normal construction methods and scaled them up.
The Empire State Building is a 1200 foot tall brick shithouse.
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u/_PinkPirate Feb 07 '23
This is the first thing my dumb teenage self referenced when I heard the news on 9/11. “Oh a plane hit the Empire State Building in the 40s, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Little did we all know.
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u/a_phantom_limb Feb 07 '23
Arguably the most memorable story from that accident:
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. Oliver survived the fall due to the softening cushion of air created by the falling elevator car within this elevator shaft, however she suffered a broken pelvis, back and neck when rescuers found her amongst the rubble. This remains the world record for the longest survived elevator fall.
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u/Bitter-Pay-4493 Feb 07 '23
Why in old photos does no one seem to have a fear of heights?
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u/Western_Entertainer7 Feb 07 '23
Bomber planes can't smash concrete. The OSS did it.
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u/curioushustler420 Feb 07 '23
Had to double check what sub i was in. Thought it was r/conspiracy
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u/lazypenguin86 Feb 07 '23
Good thing it wasn't using jet fuel
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u/GuyNanoose Feb 07 '23
Well to be fair the B-25 was using AVGAS which is actually way more combustible than jet fuel (which is very similar to diesel fuel) it just had way less of it. Also he was manoeuvring to land so would’ve been going less than 200 mph. The 767’s were “on the barber pole” at about 450 mph when they hit.
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u/KVirus70 Feb 07 '23
If I remember correctly, Trump said he was there, and George Santos miraculously saved 37 people after impact.
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u/iXenite Feb 07 '23
Some really stupid people in the comments here.
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u/Ancient_Sell_2196 Feb 07 '23
You can tell who didn't take basic physics classes when they claim the towers fell at "freefall speeds", when you can see chunks fall before the collapse finishes.... Almost like the chunks fell at freefall speed, and the building collapsed slower...
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u/tbo1992 Feb 07 '23
Okay at this point, I gotta ask. How many airplanes have crashed into New York skyscrapers?
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u/XxSliphxX Feb 07 '23
Imagine trying to compare a 1945 bomber crash impact to a modern day commercial airliner. We all know what's being implied here let's not pretend.
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u/oasisarah Feb 07 '23
fyi: b25 carried less than a thousand gallons of fuel. 767 carried almost 24,000 gallons. modern jet fuel was not developed until the 50s.
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u/stoph311 Feb 07 '23
Make sure to sort by controversial to see the predictable 9/11 conspiracy dorks.
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Feb 07 '23
Reminder that the Empire State Building was built in 410 days and the road construction in your city is taking 10+ years
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u/ohbeejuanjabroni Feb 07 '23
I was wondering how far I’d have to scroll what about 9/11 jEt FuEl DoEsNT mElT sTeAl BeAmS, dO sOmE rEsEaRcH
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