Pan Am 103 produced the largest crime scene in UK history, covering 845 square miles just over the border as debris and human remains fells out of the sky
New BBC drama series, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, has stunned viewers with its depiction of the shocking events of December 21 1988 and the devastating aftermath.
The deadliest terrorist incident to have occurred on British soil hit Lockerbie when a bomb exploded in the cargo area of the plane. All 259 people aboard the plane died and 11 on the ground lost their lives on December 21. The debris covered 845 square miles- more than 2,000 square km, spread over the border into Northumbria creating the largest crime scene in UK history.
Boeing 747 Clipper Maid Of The Seas had taken off from Heathrow and was less than two hours into its flight to New York and Detroit when passengers perished within seconds of the blast over Lockerbie, which is located in Dumfries and Galloway, south-western Scotland.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 dramatizes the Scots-US investigation into the attack, the effect it had on victims’ families and how it impacted Lockerbie’s locals.
The six part series also highlights that lobbying by UK and US-based family groups resulted in “key reforms, from strengthening travel warning systems and tighter baggage screening, to people-centred responses to major disasters”.
So what happened that fateful a day when residents of a small Scottish town prepared for the holiday time with loved ones, while Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in the skies above them?
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That evening at around 7.10 pm, resident Donald Bogie heard a sound that became so loud that he said it became “almost unbearable”. Then suddenly it went eerily quiet. He ran out of his house and saw flames. The streets were on fire, lawns were on fire, homes were on fire. Bodies lay everywhere.
Over in a field lay the body of a young man who was only wearing his underpants because the rest of his clothes had been torn off during the fall. Beside him was an undamaged bottle of Chivas Regal.
Farmer Kate Anderson told the Mirror how the cockpit of Pan Am flight 103, landed 50 yards from her remote cottage. The bodies of Captain James Bruce MacQuarrie, his copilot and the flight engineer were found still strapped into their seats. There were 98 bodies that rained on her land that evening.
Speaking in 2018 on how she and other locals tried to help in the horrifying aftermath she said: “It felt like you were living in a film. Your human resources kicked in. You did what you could to help.
“There were families who were devastated. The poor soldiers who spend Christmas day picking up bits of bodies – many of them suffered afterwards,”
Recalling the start of the nightmare, she described how it was ferociously windy: “It was blowing a hoolie that night. We heard an explosion. We later realised it was the sound of the plane hitting Lockerbie, ” she remembers.
“We could hear the bang from three miles away and could see the mushroom from the explosion. We knew it was fuel. I thought it might have been a petrol station. We could hear something whistling, so we went inside.
“There was another bang, and the electricity went off. We could see something white in our field when we went back outside. It was the cockpit, and it was about 50 yards from our house.”
Kate and her husband Kevin approached the shattered plane. She said: “It was silent. There was no sign of life. We looked inside, and there were several bodies in there, but you just knew that none of them were alive.
“There were bodies all over our farm. We later found out 98 bodies landed in our farm that night.”
Local police officer Michael Gordon was on the phone chatting to a friend when he heard a strange rumbling sound outside.
In a 2003 television interview, Michael recalled: “The weather that night was a bit wild, there was a strong wind. From my window, I could see Lockerbie as my house sits up on a hill and I heard this noise above the noise of the wind..”
He at first assumed it was a jet fighter plane as the military were known to practice in the area. He then described how he saw objects falling from the sky before seeing a fireball hurtling straight towards Lockerbie.
“When it hit, I could hear the most horrendous explosion, and I could hear the tiles on the roof of my house lifting. “
The explosion cut all telephone lines and the water supply. The fire department was able to put out all the fires within seven and a half hours using milk wagons, which were quickly filled with water and driven to the many burning pieces of wreckage.
Michael went out to help find survivors. He recalled: “Everything was on fire. I was jumping around – it was difficult to move without feeling my trousers burning.”
In the morning light, the full horror of what happened could be seen clearly. On the southern edge of the town was a huge crater with 1500 tonnes of rock and earth that had been blasted out of the ground.
Several houses on the ground in the direct path of the fireball Michael saw had been vaporised. The main plane wreckage fell on Lockerbie – both wings and its midsection – 150 tonnes of machine descending up to 500 knots speed to create the crater.
Around it, there was debris and human remains. Elsewhere In the ruins of homes, people searched for the bodies that fell out of the sky.
One shellshocked resident told one of the many TV crews that descended onto the quiet town that her street “looked like a scene out of hell.” The mid-section of the Boeing 747 fell from the sky onto Ella Ramsden’s home in Park Place. In astonishing luck the 60-year-old survived the crash – as she ran carrying her Jack Russell to the kitchen – the only part of her home that remained standing.
Ella’s dog Cara, her budgie, and even her pet goldfish survived. Ella and Cara were pulled out of the window in her kitchen door that she had broken with a frying pan. The next day, the budgie was found fluttering about the ruins and the goldfish were still swimming in their tank amid the rubble.
Ella had been tidying up after a visit by her son and two young grandsons when she heard a deafening noise and flashes of red. Speaking to the Mirror in 1998 on the ten-year anniversary of the tragedy Ella said: “The house started to come in over me. Suddenly the stars were above me. I smashed a window in the kitchen and screamed for help. People ran round to the front, but there was no front any more.
“For me, it was only losing a house. For so many others it was a loss beyond imagination.”
Ella’s family was grateful she lived for another 22 years after Lockerbie. She died in 2010. Over 60 bodies were reportedly recovered from Ella’s house and garden. It was reported that among them was US passenger Lorraine Buser – who was found sat strapped to plane seat 35C on the remains of the roof.
Lorraine, who was pregnant, was one of three members of an American family who died. There were 12 children under the age of 10 who perished that night. The youngest fatality was nine weeks old.
Normally, only four policemen worked in the Lockerbie region, but by Thursday morning there were 1,100 working alongside 1,000 soldiers, firemen and volunteers.
The youngest police officer, Colin Dorrance, then 18, saw a farmer driving a pick-up truck carrying debris from Pan Am 103 and, in the front seat, was the body of a young girl.
“It was the body of a child he’d found in a field at the back of his farm, ” he recalled in a 2018 interview.
“It was a young child under the age of five. It looked as though they were asleep; it wasn’t obviously injured, and it was just a shock to realise it was a passenger from Pan Am 103.
“At the time it all happened so fast. There were hundreds of passengers brought into the town hall.” The retired police officer later discovered it was a child by the name of Bryony Owen who was 20 months old. Bryony was travelling to the United States with her mother Yvonne Owen from Wales, to spend Christmas in Boston.
The first bodies were brought to the town hall, but people then started bringing them to the ice rink because it was the only place big and cold enough to store so many bodies.
Reportedly, more than half of those living in Lockerbie and the surrounding areas at the time who witnessed the terrible events and aftermath suffer from PTSD.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to have been convicted of the bombing. The former Libyan intelligence officer was found guilty of mass murder in 2001.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 continues tonight on BBC1 at 9pm
