Un lungo articolo pubblicato su Audubon racconta vita e contributi nel campo della ornitologia forense e in particolare – anche se indirettamente – in quello aerospaziale della compianta ornitologa statunitense Roxie Laybourne, il cui pionieristico lavoro di ricerca sul piumaggio degli uccelli ha svolto un ruolo particolarmente importante nello sviluppo delle scienze investigative e nella progettazione di velivoli più sicuri.

John Goglia was sitting in the kitchen of his East Boston home when the walls and windows shook. It was the early evening of October 4, 1960, and Goglia, who was then 16 years old, brushed off the unusual occurrence and returned to dinner. “It wasn’t really an explosion,” he recalls. “It was an impact.” A few minutes later, an acquaintance who had been teaching Goglia how to scuba dive called. The man said there was some kind of an emergency at the waterfront and told Goglia to grab his dive gear and get outside. Goglia hopped to and, much to his surprise, a police cruiser soon arrived. He tossed his oxygen tanks in the trunk and the car sped off toward Boston Harbor, lights flashing and sirens wailing into the autumn sky.

The scene at the shoreline in nearby Winthrop was “total chaos,” Goglia says. Eastern Airlines Flight 375 had taken off from Logan International Airport at 5:39 p.m. The airplane, a Lockheed Electra L-188, was slated to cut its way down the east coast, making stops in Philadelphia; Charlotte; Greenville, South Carolina; and Atlanta. But it climbed only 200 or so feet into the air when the nose abruptly lifted, the left wing dropped, and it made a sort of arching U-turn straight for the water. Witnesses described the 98,000-pound airplane as being nearly vertical when it smashed into the harbor. The fuselage tore in two and debris hurled in every direction.

Goglia slipped on his wetsuit and joined the frenzied rescue efforts. Scores of local residents had rushed out to the wreck on fishing boats and rowboats and pulled a handful of survivors from the water. Goglia helped retrieve a lifeless body and several body parts. “We’d pull them up to the top, and somebody else would grab them,” he says. “Then we’d go back down and look for more.”

Sixty years later, Flight 375 remains the deadliest aviation accident in New England’s history. Of the 72 people aboard, 62 died, including a dozen marine recruits who were bound for boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina. One marine’s family had stayed on the observation deck to see him off only to witness the horrific saga unfold.

 

Immagine da Wikimedia Commons