This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX. I'm Helima Shaw.

On October 4th, 1960, at 5.m. Eastern Airlines flight 375 took off from Boston Logan Airport

bound for Philadelphia. Just six seconds after takeoff, the plane lurched, spun, and plummeted into the muddy shallows of Boston Harbor.

62 people died.

In the hours and days following the crash, investigators scoured

the wreckage for clues, trying to find a cause. And in three of the plane's

four engines, they found bits of dark feather.

Investigators had no idea what to do.

So, they boxed the evidence up and sent it to the only place they could think of, the Smithsonian. The head of the

the head of the Fish and Wildlife Lab asked one of his top bird experts to take a look.

Her name was Roxie Leiborne. He gave the case to Roxie because he knew that

Roxie was an expert in these subtle plumage differences. This is Carla Dove.

Yes, her name is Dove and she works with Birds.

Yeah, my name is very appropriate.

She's heard that one before.

Anyway, Dove is a research manager who works at the National Museum of Natural History.

And she's kind of become the in-house Roxy historian.

So she was really into looking at the subtle differences in these birds in their plumages as she was skinning them and putting them away.

Roxie had skinned countless birds to prep them for preservation in the museum's collection.

But now, she was being asked to solve a mystery.

How do you take tiny bits of feather and figure out which bird crashed 110,000 pound plane into the ocean.

Airline investigators needed to know what kind of bird down their jet so they could try to stop it from happening again.

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