On December 21, 1988, Pan American flight 103, a Boeing 747, took off from London, bound for New York City. As it was climbing on its northerly flight path, it exploded over the town of Lockerbie in the Dumfries and Galloway region of southwest Scotland. In all, 270 people from 21 countries were killed, including all 259 passengers and crewmembers plus 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie.
.widely regarded assault on a symbol of the United States, with 189 of the victims being Americans, stood as the deadliest terrorist attack on American civilians until the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The plastic explosive that detonated in the forward cargo hold triggered a sequence of events that led to the rapid destruction of the aircraft. Winds scattered victims and debris along an 81-mile-long corridor 845 square miles in area.
In 1989, months after the plane crash and end of the formal recovery effort, a piece of scorched shirt was discovered. The piece contained a fragment of circuit board that the heat of the explosion had fused into the shirts polyester fabric.
The Scots photographed the circuit-board fragment and gave a photo to the FBI, who passed a copy to the CIA where a Directorate of Science & Technology (DS&T) electronics expert observed two things that reminded him of a device he had seen beforea timer from an earlier Libyan terrorist attack. Further analysis confirmed that the fragment exactly matched part of a timer circuit manufactured specifically for the Libyans.
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