Quote:
Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Both buildings were engineered differently as well. From my understanding this played a large factors in the towers coming down.
|
Well, they tried at least...
From Wikipedia...
Empire State Building incident[edit source | edit]
Main article:
B-25 Empire State Building crash
At 9:40 on Saturday, 28 July 1945 a USAAF B-25D crashed in thick fog into the north side of the
Empire State Building between the 79th and 80th floors. Fourteen people died - 11 in the building and the three occupants of the aircraft including the pilot,
Colonel William Smith.
[12] Betty Lou Oliver, an elevator attendant, survived the impact and a subsequent uncontrolled descent in the elevator.
As a partial result of this incident, Towers 1 and 2 of the
World Trade Center were designed to withstand an aircraft impact. However, this design came with the then-new
Boeing 707 in mind, not the larger and faster
Boeing 767 -
two of which struck the towers on September 11, 2001, resulting in their eventual
collapse.
[13]
Though I'm still puzzled as to why the towers began collapsing from the top floors down, when the aircraft impacted the buildings much lower and the structures were supported by 48 central columns of concrete and woven steel reinforcement. The real puzzle is building seven which was minimally damaged and dropped in its own footprint like a controlled demolition.