LOCKERBIE’S LAST SECRETS
The little boy saved by a Christmas present ++ The rock star and Hollywood actress due to be on board ++ The air traffic controller who saw one radar blip become five ++ Just some of the haunting details of the air disaster 30 years ago this week, as told in this devastatingly moving minute-by-minute account 5.30pm, Dec 21, 1988
AT GATE 14, in Heathrow’s Terminal 3, passengers for Pan am Flight 103 are starting to board the Maid Of The Seas.
The boeing 747 has been refuelled for the 3,000mile flight to new York and the last of the luggage is being loaded.
bags and christmas presents for friends and family are being placed in overhead lockers.
Shipping executive Tom ammerman takes his seat in First class. He was originally booked on a lunchtime departure, but his office switched flights at the last minute so he could be at one more meeting before flying home.
in Row 23 are the Rattan family returning from new Delhi after attending a relative’s wedding.
earlier, on the first leg of Flight 103 from Frankfurt on a boeing 727, three-year-old Suruchi Rattan, dressed in a distinctive red dress, had entertained a man in the row behind with stories of her uncle’s big day.
Finding their seats in the middle of the plane are 35 students from Syracuse University who have spent a term studying in London and Florence.
Two of the empty seats in First class should have been taken by the Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten and his wife nora. but she had taken so long to pack for their holiday that they cancelled their tickets and booked a flight for the next day.
actress Kim cattrall (later of Sex and The city fame) was also booked on Flight 103. but at the last minute she changed her mind as she had forgotten to buy her mother a gift of a teapot from Harrods. Kim, 32, is at Heathrow waiting to board a later flight to new York.
in an aluminium baggage container in the aircraft’s forward cargo bay area is a light brown suitcase. it contains a Toshiba ‘bombeat’ radio cassette player. Placed inside is 450 grams of Semtex plastic explosive attached to a timer. The suitcase is only 25in from the skin of the 747’s fuselage.
5.55pm
BACK in Terminal 3, car mechanic Jaswant basuta, 47, is running as fast he can towards Flight 103’s departure gate.
He is unsteady on his feet as he’s been drinking with relatives who’d come to see him off. basuta gets to the gate and pleads with the Pan am duty manager to let him on, as his wife is expecting him in new York. but the duty manager refuses.
6.04pm
THE Jumbo moves away from the gate and begins to slowly taxi towards Heathrow’s runway 27R. at the controls are two american pilots: 55-year-old captain Jim MacQuarrie, who has over 4,000 hours’ experience flying 747s; and First Officer Ray Wagner with 5,000-plus hours’ experience.
6.25pm
IN THE darkened flight deck, capt MacQuarrie opens the throttles of the four engines and the 330-ton jet begins to move down the runway.
Twenty minutes later, Pan am 103 takes off through thick cloud into the dark sky. On board are 243 passengers and 16 flight crew.
6.45pm
THREE hundred miles away in the small Dumfries-shire market town of Lockerbie, 14-yearold Steven Flannigan is leaving his home at 16 Sherwood crescent and heading through the wind and rain to friend David edward’s house to check a christmas present — a new bicycle — for Steven’s little sister Joanne.
6.58pm
CABIN crew are serving drinks and handing out headphones for the in-flight movie, crocodile Dundee ii. The plane levels off at 31,000ft. ‘Good evening, Scottish. clipper One Zero Three. We are level at three one zero,’ capt MacQuarrie says to Prestwick air Traffic control. ‘Good evening,’ replies air traffic controller alan Topp. ‘Route direct to five nine, north, one zero west’.
He watches the 747 move across his radar screen as a bright green cross. Pan am Flight 103 is six miles above the Scottish border.
7.02pm and 50 secs
THE Semtex bomb in the suitcase detonates, creating a 20in hole in the fuselage. Massive cracks instantly appear along the fuselage’s aluminium skin, which starts to peel off. The lights in the cabin go out and the plane de-pressurises. it starts to pull apart. The flight deck recorder captures the sound of the nose section breaking away, which is blown back, hitting the right wing and smashing off one of the engines, then the tail assembly.
The main cabin is now exposed to the elements and, as the plane disintegrates, most of the passengers are thrown from the fuselage into temperatures of -46c. They are rendered unconscious by lack of oxygen. anything not fixed down is thrown from the plane.
at Prestwick air Traffic control, alan Topp stares at his screen as Pan am 103 transforms from one green blip into five.
7.03pm
AS THE main cabin section reaches 19,000ft, it drops vertically and the disintegration accelerates. Only about 15 rows of seats remain fixed to a section of floor. The fulllength streamlined wing, 200ft long and containing 20,000 gallons of fuel, is falling fastest at a speed of around 500mph. among the plane debris, christmas presents, bibles, money, toys and suitcases are tumbling through the night sky.
as the heavy wreckage falls, many passengers are caught in a strong wind and carried east. Some regain consciousness as they reach more breathable air.
a passenger strapped into a seat clutches a crucifix; two friends hold hands and a mother clutches tightly on to her baby. The engines are still running and no3 engine is burning fuel as it falls — looking like a fireball.
in Lockerbie, 59-year-old widow ella Ramsden is opening christmas cards in her house on Rosebank crescent. On the television, Michael aspel is just about to surprise Sooty’s puppeteer Harry corbett on This is Your Life. ella’s Jack Russell starts to growl.
‘What on earth’s wrong with you?’ she asks.
in a garage a few streets away, Steven Flannigan and David edwards are building Steven’s sister’s bike. ‘What’s that noise?’ David says. ‘it’s thunder,’ Steven replies. Then the strip-light in the garage falls to the ground.
Forty-six seconds after the bomb detonates, Pan am Flight 103’s wings hit Sherwood crescent at 500mph, disintegrating on impact and leaving a crater more than 150ft long and 30ft deep, vapourising Dora and Maurice Henry and their house at no13, the Somerville family at no15, and Steven Flannigan’s family at no16.
a fireball shoots up 300ft and spreads towards the nearby a47 dual carriageway, scorching cars heading south. Drivers swerve to avoid the wreckage. Further along Sherwood crescent, a vast lump of concrete thrown up by the blast crashes through the roof of Sarah Lawson’s house and onto the chair she’d been sitting in seconds before.
ella Ramsden can see a huge red glow through the window. ‘is this the end of the world?’ she thinks.
Older Lockerbie residents are having flashbacks to World War ii. The british Geological Survey seismic monitoring stations in southern Scotland record an event measuring 1.6 on the Richter Scale.
ella scoops up her dog and runs for the back door. There is a loud roaring sound and she is sucked backwards as a 60ft-long section of the fuselage hits her house. The lights go out and the building starts to collapse around her.
Too scared to move, she screws her eyes tight shut and calls out to her dead husband: ‘Harry, what’s