terrorist bomb
The Bombing of Pan Am 103
It’s indelibly etched on my memory: the night the Pan Am flight 103, en route from Frankfurt, Germany, via London Heathrow to New York City in the USA, came down in Lockerbie, a small town in SW Scotland, on the evening of December 21 1988, killing all 259 men, women and children on board, and 11 residents on the ground. Because we lived it; we knew people connected with those caught up in the horror. Lockerbie is only 70 miles from where we live. We’ve visited the memorial sites since and been profoundly moved by the atmosphere that still clings to them.
The six-part series, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, airing on BBC1, captures aspects of the investigation I was unaware of, however, or knew only sketchily. Like the sheer humanity and dedication of the locals in Lockerbie, who went way beyond the call of duty to care for the passengers of that ill-fated flight, and to cherish their families. Like the dedication of the local police, used to dealing with bike theft, who committed themselves body and soul to this massive and gruelling investigation and to supporting its victims. Like the sheer scale and complexity of the operation.
Although the drama is necessarily truncated, enormous effort has been taken to make it as authentic as possible. It conveys many of the facts that made this one of the worse air disasters of all time and one of the most complex investigations. The debris from the plane was scattered over 850 square miles. 5,000 responders combed the countryside for clues. Investigators traversed the globe interviewing over 10,000 individuals in 16 countries. Enormous quantities of pieces of evidence were painstakingly collected and labelled, enabling the reconstruction of much of the 747, the bodies of the victims, their suitcases and possessions, and the bomb.
Somewhere in the mountain of detritus a tiny fragment was found which led the team to establish that the bomb had been placed inside a Toshiba radio. Another small fragment embedded in a distinctive shirt led to the identification of the timer that triggered the explosion. Following meticulous work by multiple agencies and organisations, police eventually tracked down the person who bought the clothes which were packed around the bomb – in a shop in Malta. This led to the identification and arrest of two Libyan operatives.
Quite how the various international organisations cooperated is unknown but the film does portray battles and tensions and failures in communication that give some indication of the power struggles, tensions and emotional overload. I loved the moment when a slick FBI agent arrives from the USA and finds the headquarters in Scotland are based in a rural primary school!! The Senior Investigating Officer may be a quintessential Scot from a low key force in sprawling Dumfries and Galloway, but he’s well able to retain mastery of the situation, which he does in a delightfully understated way.
This is a powerful and intensely moving portrayal which resurrected a lot of memories for me, and I can’t bring myself to recount some of the most macabre details we heard of. But the knowledge that those families are still grieving the enormous loss and the horror of those sights and sounds, still fighting for justice, stirs deep emotions. The BBC are right to remind us.
