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I just had this thought recently. If the terrorists had chosen to target the Empire State Building, would the building's fate have been the same as the Twin Towers, or would it have survived? From everything that I have read about these buildings, the ESB, to me, seems like it's sturdier-built, whereas the Twin Towers seem pretty flimsy in comparison.
| It would survive | 4 | |
| It would collapse | 5 |
Pretty sure a plane has crashed into it before during ww2. Wasnt a 747 tho. Didnt a huge jet like that recently hit another building somewhere and the building survived? Like the last 10 years
It depends on where it would hit the building and if any major support beams would be sheered (or cut).
As long as no major support beam is cut... I believe the Empire State Building would stand.
It's structure is also much different than the Twin Towers, and I believe in general more robust because higher factors of safety were used back then. More modern understanding of structures and computer calculations have allowed the construction of buildings with a lower factor of safety and less actual structure (cheaper to build) than in the previous generation of buildings.
Note also that the collison with the Twin Towers did not bring them down. The resulting fire that weakened the structure above it caused the upper part of the building to collapse onto the floor of the fire. That shock impact is what caused that floor structure to fail - and then the next one down (with added weight of another floor) and so on.
Without that fire - or the fire exposed structure - the upper floors would have been adequately supported and only a floor or two would have been damaged.
The question was a 767. I didn’t think the ESB would survive, because it was built with entirely different “telescoping” system of construction. The Twin Twin Towers were a radically new concept, with a super reinforced exoskeleton on the outside, with columns on the inside. They were essentially 3 skyscrapers stacked one on top of each other. The plane that hit the ESB in 1945 was a B25 which flew at about 325 mph, slower than a jet aircraft. Also the 767 weighs about 3 times as much as a B25.
Honestly I dont know. A 747 will knock down most buildings if it struck high or low enough. Really depends on the internal structure of the building.