Pictures from the crash
Here is a selective collection of pictures from the crash of Pan Am 103.
From the places of the crash, the investigation, the cleaning up and the
victims. Some pictures might offend. We have received some e-mails from
families and friends of victims, who asked us not to publish close-ups
of their beloved ones on this website. So we didn't put pictures of victims
up, except those where the face and other parts to recognize are not possible.
That means, you will not be able to recognize the victim from the picture.
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The nose of Pan Am 103 has become the symbol of the crash and the
ongoing Lockerbie Crisis. It landed on the north of a churchyard at
Tundergarth, just outside Lockerbie Town. The body of the pilots and a
stewardess was found inside. The stewardess still had a pulse when first
found, but she was dead a few minutes later. When rescue services reached
the broken cockpit at night, the emergency light inside was still glooming
with a ghostly green light.
Wreckage: Pan Am 103 didn't reach ground in one piece. It split
up already on its way down. Pieces of the wreck landed in most of Dumfries
all the way up to the higland Scotland. Some of it fell on the town of
Lockerbie, some landed on British Highway A74, some of it in the woods
and wastelands, some of it in the sea and some of it in the gardens and
fields of farmers living around Lockerbie. The main fuselage (body of plane)
landed on the ground together with part of a wing with fuel and the motors.
The explosion erased several houses and made a giant crater at touchdown
site right in the middle of Lockerbie.
Victims:
being
killed in a plane crash is a horrible death. Most victims of plane crashes
are ripped apart by the giant forces at work, when a plane is disintegrating.
But some victims seemed almost unhurt, lying on the ground as if they were
sleeping - but post mortem investigations showed severe damage to the interior
of the body. Some debris from the plane reached the ground without a scratch,
for instance several small glass bottles with liquor - but the same mercy
was not intended for the unfortunate passengers and crew. The victims of
Lockerbie were killed by the fuel explosion at Sherwood Crescent. Not a
trace of them was left.
There are other ways to show pics of victims, than the ones the mass
media liked to print in the days after the crash. This website does not
feature that kind of pictures.
The technical investigation was just like a giant game of 3-D puzzle.
All
pieces of the crashed plane (that was found) was put together again in
a hangar of the Royal Air Force. That is how they traced how the plane
broke up and found the alleged place where the bomb went of.
