To mark the 37th anniversary of the Lockerbie Bombing, the Daily Mail has launched a new minute-by-minute podcast reconstruction of how the attack unfolded, narrated by veteran broadcaster Michael Buerk.
The podcast features Buerk’s devastating firsthand account of arriving at Lockerbie the morning after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown apart at 31,000 feet, killing all 259 people on board and 11 residents below.
Alongside the podcast, the Daily Mail’s award-winning Deep Dive team has created an interactive reconstruction of the Lockerbie bombing, which can be found here.
Orchestrated by Libyan intelligence agents under Colonel Gaddafi, the attack on December 21, 1988 killed passengers from 21 countries, including 35 Syracuse University students flying home for Christmas.
The podcast features Buerk’s devastating firsthand account of arriving at Lockerbie the morning after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown apart at 31,000 feet
Orchestrated by Libyan intelligence agents under Colonel Gaddafi, the attack on December 21, 1988 killed passengers from 21 countries
Only one person, Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, has ever been convicted for the attack, though a second suspect was arrested in 2022 and awaits trial.
Buerk covered the breaking news on the BBC Nine O’Clock News that evening, then flew to Scotland at dawn, arriving at Lockerbie the morning after the bombing.
‘I was doing the news the night Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie’, the broadcaster recounted.
‘The story broke at two minutes past seven that evening. We got the first call about ten minutes later and from then on the newsroom was a madhouse.
‘After a lot of lobbying late into the night, I talked my way onto the first flight up to Glasgow at six the following morning, hired a car and was in Lockerbie just after breakfast.
‘The wreckage of the Jumbo was actually spread across much of Southern Scotland. Charred bits of the plane were found 90 miles away.
‘But the bulk of it, including the engines, came down on and around Lockerbie with the force of an earthquake.
‘One of the wings, loaded with fuel, had scythed down onto Sherwood Crescent like a gigantic flaming sword. The explosion vaporised houses and the people inside them; no trace of them was ever found.’
The Boeing 747 had been destroyed by a Semtex bomb hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player in the forward cargo hold
Buerk recounted the devastating scenes he witnessed that morning
Only one person, Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, has ever been convicted for the attack
The Boeing 747 had been destroyed by a Semtex bomb hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player in the forward cargo hold, which detonated 38 minutes after takeoff from London Heathrow.
The bomb was concealed in a suitcase that had been loaded at Malta’s Luqa Airport. Libyan intelligence operatives had routed the unaccompanied bag through Frankfurt before it was transferred onto Pan Am 103.
Buerk recounted the devastating scenes he witnessed that morning.
He said: ‘All that was left was a giant crater, 155 feet wide and 191 feet long, still steaming in the early mist.
‘Many of the bodies of the passengers were terribly mangled by the giant forces that were exerted when the plane broke up.
‘But many looked as though they were sleeping. One was still in his airline seat, apparently still holding the miniature bottle of red wine he was being served when the bomb went off.
‘On the outskirts of town we found a field that seemed to be covered with bits of body; the pink of human brains stood out against the dull winter greens and greys.
‘In that town, working amongst the human and mechanical debris, it was impossible not to keep thinking of what that moment of horror had been like and, worse, wonder how long people were conscious before they died.
‘I found it difficult to see how any human being could do that to innocent people they did not know, and hated whoever had done it with all my heart.’
Buerk’s full account appears in his 2004 autobiography The Road Taken.
Listen to Minute by Minute: The Lockerbie Bombing now, wherever you get your podcasts.
