What happened
On the afternoon of October 4, 1960, an Lockheed Electra, registration N 553<0xC2>3, was performing a takeoff from runway 9 at Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts. Shortly after the aircraft became airborne, it encountered a flock of starlings. The impact resulted in the ingestion of several birds into engines number 1, 2, and 4.
Following the ingestion, the crew shut down engine number 1 and feathered its propeller. Engines 2 and 4 suffered significant but temporary fluctuations in power. This unstable power delivery caused the aircraft to yaw toward the left and lose airspeed until it reached its stall speed. As the plane entered a leftward skid and lost velocity, the left wing dropped and the nose pitched upward, initiating a left-hand spin. Because the aircraft was at an altitude of less than 150 feet, there was insufficient height to recover from the descent. The impact with Winthrop Bay resulted in the total destruction of the airframe. Of the 72 persons on board, only 10 survivors were recorded.
Findings
The investigation concluded that the accident was driven by the specific sequence of power loss and subsequent recovery across multiple engines following the bird strike, which led to a critical loss of airspeed and aerodynamic control during the initial climb phase.