Just happened to see this article from the Daily News today about an American B-25 Bomber crashing into the Empire State Building in 1945. The crash killed 14 people and injured many others but the damage was mainly limited to the 78th and 79th floors.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/b-2 ... -1.2300615The article says "The crash was accompanied by a fire that virtually destroyed everything on the 79th floor and the 78th floor, the latter fortunately vacant. The fire raged nearly and hour, being brought into check at 10:40, according to Fire Commissioner Patrick Walsh.
But there came a series of “flash” fires as high octane gas from the B-25’s tanks poured down elevator operator was blown out of her car by the blast, and seared in a flash of white-hot flame. But there was no appreciable damage below the 78th floor, the blaze being confined to empty corridors - all fire proof."
I never heard of this before. Why weren't people talking about this after 9/11? Why is it that a military bomber struck a building in New York City in 1945 similarly as the two commercial aircraft did on 9/11 but the building wasn't destroyed, yet the twin towers collapsed from their foundations after being struck in their upper floors? The article doesn't say whether the bomber was carrying any payload, but that would only have made the explosion more severe than those of commercial jets on 9/11, and yet there was less damage that was ultimately contained.
The old World Trader Center buildings were completed in 1973 and had 110 stories each. Instead of the traditional stacked glass-and-steel box construction of many New York skyscrapers, the architect, Yamasaki, worked with structural engineers to come up with a revolutionary design: two hollow tubes, supported by closely spaced steel columns encased in aluminum. Floor trusses connected this exterior steel lattice to the central steel core of the building. In this way, the “skin” of the building would be strong enough that internal columns wouldn’t be necessary to hold it together.
This Daily News article is very interesting to say the least, giving some credence to the conspiracy theories that 9/11 was an inside job where explosives had been put in the basements of both towers. I don't know how one could come to any other conclusion in comparing similar incidents, other than the construction of the WTC buildings were inferior to that of the Empire State Building.
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