PLANE HITS BUILDING

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 14067, 23 May 1946, Page 3

PLANE HITS BUILDING

FIVE PERSONS KILLED FIRE ON 58TH FLOOR New York, May 21. A twin-engined Army transport plane containing five persons crashed into the back of the 90-storey Bank of Manhattan Co. Building in Wall Street and set fire to the 58th floor. Police and firemen rushed to the building as flames were seen where the plane struck. Firemen extinguished the fire on the 58th floor and also one which had started on the 24th floor. Parts of the plane fell into Pine Street, which runs at the back of the building, but there were few people about. Some persons, however, were struck by falling debris and flaming particles. All five bodies of the occupants of the plane, including the pilot, who was an Army captain, and one woman, believed to be a lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corps, were recovered from the wreckage of the forward part of the plane. The plane when it struck made a hole 15ft square in the wall of the building. The plane exploded and caused outbreaks of fire in various offices, but was not itself burned.

Army officials told the police that the plane, a G 45, left the Army air base at Smyrna, Tennessee, with five persons on board for Newark airport.

There was a moderate fog. with visibility of half a mile and an estimated ceiling of 400 ft over lower Manhattan when the crash occurred. The Bank of Manhattan Co. Building is several miles south of the Empire State Building, against which an Army bomber crashed last July, killing 14 persons, including three occupants of the plane.