On July 28, 1945, heavy fog blinded Lieutenant Colonel William Smith Jr. as he piloted a B-25 Mitchell bomber through Manhattan, accidentally crashing straight into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building. The brutal impact ignited fuel fires, severed structural beams, and snapped the thick steel cables of multiple elevator shafts.
Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver was injured on the 80th floor during the initial collision. Rescuers placed her inside a second elevator car to evacuate her to ground level, unaware that the crash had critically damaged that car's cables as well. As soon as the doors closed, the compromised cables snapped completely, sending Oliver into a terrifying freefall down 75 stories—nearly 1,000 feet—to the building's sub-basement.
Remarkably, Oliver survived the fall, setting a Guinness World Record for the longest survived elevator plunge in history. Her survival was a triumph of mechanical engineering under worst-case conditions. As the elevator accelerated downwards, automatic safety arresters clamped onto the shaft guide rails, significantly friction-braking the car to reduce its terminal velocity.
Simultaneously, the hundreds of feet of heavy, snapped steel cable gathered at the bottom of the shaft, coiling into a makeshift spring-like buffer. Most importantly, the tightly fitted elevator shaft trapped a massive column of air beneath the falling cab, compressing it into a pneumatic cushion that dramatically softened the violent terminal impact. Although Oliver sustained severe injuries including a broken back and pelvis, she made a full recovery.
The catastrophe provided dramatic, real-world proof that automatic elevator arresters and shaft air-buffering systems could save lives even during an unprecedented skyscraper disaster.