The Lockerbie Bombing

Like many others this week, I am too overcome by the recent terrorist attacks to write an article on events that happened hundreds of years ago. Instead, I find myself remembering the Lockerbie bombing - described by British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, earlier this year as the 'most heinous terrorist act of recent years'. No one could have guessed that, eight months after this statement, terrorists would kill thousands of people. But on the night of the Lockerbie bombing, thirteen years ago, death struck in the quiet of a Scottish winter.

It was the evening of December 21st, 1988. Flight Pan Am 103 was en route from Frankfurt to New York via London. Full of travellers returning home for Christmas, the Boeing 747 - 121 took off from London at 6.25 pm. 37 minutes later, while cruising at 31000 feet, it disintegrated. Burning debris rained down on Lockerbie, a small town of about 5,000 homes, creating a swathe of destruction through houses and surrounding countryside. 259 people were killed in the plane and another 11 died on the ground.

An eye-witness described how there was " a terrible explosion, and the whole sky lit up, and the sky was actually raining fire,"

The ground impact was so forceful that it measured 1.6 on the Richter scale. Wreckage was spread over 130 kilometres (81 miles) and, in Lockerbie, part of the plane created a massive crater, 47 metres (155 feet) broad and (59 metres) 196 feet long. The weight of material displaced by the wing structure was estimated to be well in excess of 1500 tonnes.

Rescue workers arrived quickly but there were no survivors from the plane, nor from some of the houses in Sherwood Crescent where an aviation fuel explosion set many homes on fire. 21 houses were destroyed.

I shall never forget the media coverage of the scene at the airport as relatives waiting to greet family were told of the disaster.

At first, the cause of this mass destruction was not clear. Although a bomb was suspected, it was possible that a fault in the aircraft had caused the initial explosion. A massive hunt through the surrounding countryside, much of it heavily wooded, produced thousands of pieces of debris. The search involved over a thousand people and included infrared images supplied by satellites. Any parts of the plane were taken to a Royal Air Force hangar, near Carlisle in northern England, where they were painstakingly fitted together to reconstruct as much of the aircraft as possible. This gigantic three-dimensional puzzle was completed by the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) and other technical experts.

This kind of investigation takes many months and its conclusions are never 100 per cent certain. However the AAIB did determine that an intentional explosive device was the cause of the crash. For an easy-to-understand but detailed account of the investigation see "The Investigation into the Fall of Pan Am Flight 103" by Paul C. Janzen at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/526...

The criminal investigation and trial were harrowing experiences for the relatives of the deceased and will be covered in the next article.

Further Links:

The Pan Am 103 Crash Website