To: ALL EMBASSY EMPLOYEES
Subject: THREAT TO CIVIL AVIATION
POST HAS BEEN NOTIFIED BY THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION THAT ON DECEMBER 5, 1988, AN UNIDENTIFIED INDIVIDUAL TELEPHONED A U.S. DIPLOMATIC FACILITY IN EUROPE AND STATED THAT SOMETIME WITHIN THE NEXT TWO WEEKS THERE WOULD BE A BOMBING ATTEMPT AGAINST A PAN AMERICAN AIRCRAFT FLYING FROM FRANKFURT TO THE UNITED STATES.
-- From a memo posted two weeks ago at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, based on an advisory sent to American diplomatic missions in Europe and the Middle East.
Not one of the 3,000 residents of Lockerbie is likely ever to forget the horrors that befell the Scottish village during Christmas week of 1988. At dinnertime last Wednesday, on the first night of winter, a rain of fire and metal suddenly fell on Lockerbie, destroying houses and automobiles and scattering debris as far as 80 miles away. Some called it a "great ball of flame" and likened it to a fire storm or a mighty clap of thunder, while others wondered if it was the result of an accident at a nearby nuclear plant.
As the people of Lockerbie and the rest of the world quickly learned, the grisly shower consisted of the remains of a 747 jetliner, Pan American Flight 103 from London to New York, and its 258 passengers and crew members. Long before dawn, emergency rescue teams realized that everybody on the plane had perished, along with at least 22 people on the ground. In the grim history of aviation disasters, Flight 103 made the record books on two counts: as Britain's deadliest air crash and as Pan Am's worst accident involving only one plane.
At 6:25 p.m., Flight 103 had pulled away from Terminal 3 at London's Heathrow Airport. Takeoff was 25 minutes late, but that was hardly unusual in the midst of the Christmas travel crush at one of the world's busiest airports. Among the 258 passengers were some 49, many of them U.S. servicemen, who had arrived from Frankfurt on a connecting flight, and 35 undergraduates who had been on an overseas study program sponsored by Syracuse University, as well as four U.S. State Department employees.
The plane, christened Clipper Maid of the Seas, climbed smoothly to its cruising altitude of 31,000 ft. as it headed northward on a normal course toward Scotland and the North Atlantic Circle route, which would take it to New York in about 7 1/2 hours and then on to Detroit. Both takeoff and early flight were normal, and within 35 minutes the aircraft was routinely transferred from London air-traffic control at West Drayton to Scotland's air- traffic control at Prestwick, southwest of Glasgow. Inside the plane, passengers were busily settling in for the long flight -- chatting with friends, fiddling with pillows, reading magazines -- while the attendants began preparations to serve dinner.
At 7:17 p.m., Flight 103 disappeared from Prestwick's radar screens.