In late July 2025, rumors circulated on social media about a Mitchell B-25 bomber from the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) that supposedly crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945.
For example, a July 24 Facebook post (archived) with an alleged photo of the crash read: "A B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building in 1945, after getting lost in heavy fog."
(History Addicts/Facebook)
The post received over 7,200 reactions and over 5,100 comments as of this writing. Similar claims appeared elsewhere on Facebook (archived and archived).
The claim is true. Snopes has previously investigated claims about photographs allegedly showing the aftermath of the 1945 Empire State Building incident and verified the existence of this historical event.
On Saturday morning, July 28, 1945, Lt. Colonel William Franklin Smith Jr. was piloting (archived) a B-25 Mitchell bomber on a routine flight from Massachusetts to Newark Airport when fog reduced visibility over New York City. Air traffic control warned of poor visibility, but Smith became disoriented in the fog while flying at low altitude through Manhattan.
At approximately 9:49 a.m., the bomber struck the north side of the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors at roughly 200 mph (archived), killing all three crew members and eleven office workers.
The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition that the crash killed 13 people, along with one more who died days later from injuries. The event later resurfaced on NPR (archived) in 2008 and in Time Magazine (archived) in 2015. The Associated Press published (archived) a newsreel about the incident in 2012.
Photos from the crash are available on Getty Images, where one image, almost identical to the one attached in the claim, is captioned in French: "View of a floor where a bomber crashed into the Empire State Building in New York, United States, in 1945."
The claim appeared to be circulating in late July 2025, amid the 80th anniversary of the crash. The Associated Press published (archived) a "Today in History" article about the anniversary, which likely contributed to renewed social media interest in the event in 2025.