Lockerbie jet’s resting place...
IT may look like any old scrapyard, littered with discarded vehicles and strewn with rubbish.
But this untidy site holds a chilling secret – for the pile of debris in the trees is the wreckage of the Pan Am jumbo jet blown up over Lockerbie almost 29 years ago.
The snap, taken by a drone photography enthusiast, shows the remains of the Boeing 747 still lie in Windley’s Salvage scrapyard in Tattershall, Lincs.
It was taken there shortly after the December 1988 bombing that killed all 259 on board along with 11 Lockerbie residents. The plane’s shattered cockpit – famously photographed in the Scottish field where it landed – is now hidden by trees to the right of the photo.
The cylindrical frame of a jet engine is also visible, as is the white and blue paint that covered the fuselage. Scrapyard owner Roger Windley is paid around £800 a month to store the wreckage, but refused to comment.
Other parts of the jet were reconstructed at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Hampshire before being returned to Scotland. The Libyan spy Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of planting the bomb. He was freed in 2009 suffering terminal cancer and died three years later.
In 2015 it was revealed police were pursuing two other suspects – former Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s brother-in-law Abdullah Senussi and spy boss Nasser Ali Ashour.