The View from the 79th Floor
Radio Diaries
Radio Diaries & Radiotopia
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eighty years ago, on July 28, 1945, an Army bomber pilot on a routine ferry mission found himself lost in the fog over Manhattan. A dictation machine in a nearby office happened to capture the sound of the plane as it hit the Empire State Building at the 79th floor.
Fourteen people were killed. Debris from the plane severed the cables of an elevator, which fell 79 stories with a young woman inside. She survived. The crash prompted new legislation that—for the first time—gave citizens the right to sue the federal government.
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| 0:00.0 | Radio Topia |
| 0:02.0 | From PRX |
| 0:06.0 | From PRX is Radiotopia. |
| 0:08.0 | This is Radio Diaries. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Joe Richmond. |
| 0:10.0 | It was strangely cold and foggy |
| 0:14.0 | on the morning of July 28, |
| 0:16.0 | 1945. |
| 0:17.0 | But World War II was coming to a close, |
| 0:19.0 | and the mood in New York City on that Saturday was cheerful. |
| 0:23.5 | Millions were eating breakfast, running errands, |
| 0:26.5 | and one 20-year-old woman was on her way to the 80th floor of what was then the tallest building in the world. |
| 0:33.2 | Her name was Betty Lou Oliver, and she spent her days going up and down and up and down the Empire State Building, |
| 0:39.3 | as the operator of elevator number six. |
| 0:42.3 | While Betty worked that morning in her crisp uniform, smiling at passengers, |
| 0:47.3 | she couldn't have known that outside the building, a young U.S. Army pilot on his way to LaGuardia Airport, |
| 0:53.3 | was lost in the thick fog and flying low over Manhattan. |
| 0:58.1 | She couldn't have known that the pilot of that B-25 had just narrowly missed the Chrysler building, and then Grand Central. |
| 1:05.6 | She might have heard the roar of the plane as it got closer, and she might have wondered what it was as she got |
| 1:11.1 | called up to the 80th floor just before 10 a.m. At the exact moment, the plane slammed into the |
| 1:18.2 | 79th floor of the Empire State Building, Betty experienced every elevator rider's worst nightmare. |
| 1:25.3 | Down she fell, floor by floor, more than a thousand feet to the sub-basement. |
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