Published: Friday, December 23, 1988
Section: FRONT
Page: 12A
The crumbled cockpit of the Pan Am jumbo jet lay on its side atop a windswept hilltop east of town, its nose shattered, its steel ribbing sticking out. Bodies, draped in white plastic sheets, were strewn about.
A smashed section of wing lay in another farm field a few miles closer to town. There were more bodies, undraped and unrecognizable, with bits of cloth adhering. Miniature liquor bottles, unbroken, were scattered about the bodies.
At the edge of town, an airline seat with its female passenger still strapped in, her arms and legs dangling like a rag doll's, was embedded in the wreckage of a gray stucco row house.
A few blocks away, a huge jet engine had corkscrewed into the pavement. Several locals posed next to it for photographers, as if it were a trophy.
Across town, in the Sherwood Park section, there was only a jagged 30-foot deep crater, partly filled with jet fuel, where four houses once stood. Around the crater's rim stood the burned-out hulks of more homes. The blackened, twisted wreckage of automobiles littered the main road linking Glasgow with England through the south.
This was the six-mile-long path of destruction cut by the doomed airliner after it disintegrated at 31,000 feet Wednesday night. This was how as many as 276 people died -- 259 people aboard the plane and 17 local residents named Thursday as missing. This was the site revealed at dawn Thursday.
"This is what could not be seen at night," said Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, obviously shaken after a tour of the area.
"The destruction of the houses . . . and the crater and the amount of metal and debris all around . . . . It's far worse than I thought, and one had no idea till one came here of the enormous area over which debris is spread," she said.
As she spoke, policemen behind her in the field where the cockpit lay were busily scooping up credit cards, luggage tags and billfolds from the grass and placing them in clear plastic bags. In distant fields, soldiers, some with dogs, could be seen searching among grazing sheep for more bits of bodies and shards of metal. Each piece was being precisely plotted to aid investigators in reconstructing the crash.
In the air, Royal Air Force helicopters were systematically photographing the forests and fields around town, hoping to catch the glint of metal and alert ground searchers to take a closer look.
By midmorning, police had sealed off six main sites where debris fell. In the town, residents tried to go about their business, as if everything was normal. It wasn't. Joggers dashed past smoldering houses, ducking under yellow tape strips hung by the police to cordon off damaged areas; paperboys delivered issues picturing their own town ablaze on the front page.
Mandy Andrews pushed her youngsters, Cheryl and Dean, in a stroller past the huge jet engine embedded in the pavement not far from her front door. She glanced at it sideways with a look of horror.
"There was a sound like thunder and the sky was suddenly on fire," she said. "I could see this big round glowing object dropping toward my house. I thought it was a bomb. I didn't know what to think. I thought we might die."
She patted her daughter on the head. "Cheryl slept through it all," she said. "After it hit, I ran upstairs and she was stretched out, asleep. I gave her a hug. I was so glad we were still alive."
Down the road, Ella Ramsden's house was the only one in that area damaged by flying debris, and it was pulverized, but she miraculously escaped injury.
The house had apparently been battered by flying bodies, including that of the woman still in her seat. The belongings of the dead -- shredded suitcases and camera cases -- lay in heaps with her household goods.
At the Townfoot gasoline station and tire dealership, owner Sam Hamilton struggled to smile. He pointed to his damaged house -- "That one, the one with the television antenna knocked crooked. But my family is intact."