At p. Just minutes after the plane off at 31, feet, the bomb detonated near the left wing. Power went out instantly and the plane began breaking apart, sending the crewmembers and passengers, including 35 Syracuse University students returning from a semester abroad, plummeting toward Earth.
None survived. Meanwhile, down below in the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, residents found themselves directly in the path of falling plane debris. When the fuel-laden wings and a section of the main body crashed into one house, the subsequent explosion created a foot-long crater and sent a fireball shooting up into the sky.
One policeman reportedly compared it to the mushroom cloud from a miniature atomic bomb. The couple that owned the house died, as did nine neighbors ranging in age from 10 to Homes up to 75 yards away lost their roofs, and those even further from the blast had their doors and windows shattered. On December 21, , the United Arab Emirates is formed. The union of six small Gulf kingdoms—to which a seventh was soon added—created a small state with an outsized role in the global economy.
A number of kingdoms on the norther coast of the Arabian Peninsula came under The following Three months after a new French constitution was approved, Charles de Gaulle is elected the first president of the Fifth Republic by a sweeping majority of French voters.
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General George S. Patton, commander of the U. He was 60 years old. Residents living in the quiet village of Lockerbie were directly in the path of the falling aircraft debris.
It was a cold and windy night, with most residents at home, many watching Christmas specials on TV or wrapping presents. As the largest section of the plane fell onto houses below, the explosion created a metre-long crater that sent a massive fireball into the sky. As pieces of the aircraft fell on Lockerbie, dozens of fires broke out. Eleven locals were killed, ranging in age from 10 to For the residents of Lockerbie it would be several hours before they realised it was an aircraft that had exploded and crashed upon the town, killing 11 people instantly.
In the aftermath of the crash, investigators found a timer, as well as fragments of a circuit board — evidence that a bomb caused the plane to explode and not mechanical failure.
Now the hunt was on for the bombers. In March , tensions between the US and Libya had reached fever pitch when the two fired at each other off the Libyan coast, in disputed waters. Weeks later, in West Berlin, a bomb exploded at a nightclub filled with US serviceman, killing two Americans and a Turkish woman. More than others were injured.
Once the US received intelligence that Libya had been involved, they responded with air strikes. But rather than forcing Gaddafi to back down, prosecutors later stated that the air strikes prompted him to take further action — to bomb Pan Am flight The aircraft had taken off just half an hour earlier from London Heathrow and was on its way to New York with passengers and 16 crew on board, when a Semtex bomb hidden in a suitcase detonated at 31, feet.
Meanwhile, the bodies of the tragic passengers on board the doomed flight and their personal belongings were scattered on residential streets, surrounding gardens and the countryside around. But for Mr Giesecke, now 65, the discovery that night of one of those lost souls — Lindsey Otenasek, the year-old Syracuse University student who landed on his hedge in the back garden — forged an unbreakable bond of friendship with her family in the United States.
To this day, Lindsey's mother, Peggy, 85, still cherishes two small pebbles from Mr Giesecke's garden she took as a permanent reminder of the spot where her daughter — the youngest of her six children - was found, and of the Scottish town which treated her and other victims with such kindness and respect. Last night, Mr Giesecke recalled the moment the families met for the first time, saying: 'About a year after the bombing, I remember working in my garden when I saw a couple standing uncertainly on the pavement outside my gate.
The woman looked at me and said 'I believe my daughter Lindsey was found in your garden. I'd never learned the identity of the girl on my hedge but I'd never forgotten her. He added: 'The garden and the area had all been cleaned up by then.
The hedge was gone and there were fresh pebbles down. I showed her exactly where I'd found her and she was very grateful I could explain what happened that night. Lives in ruins: A police officer looks over the rubble from houses destroyed in the disaster where all passengers and 16 crew members on board were killed.
Aftermath: A crater in the town, filled with the wreckage from a deadly combination of mangled fuselage and burned aviation fuel that rained down upon Lockerbie with lethal force. Debris: Large sections of the aircraft littered the streets of Lockerbie as seen in this photo taken by Mr Giesecke after the disaster. I felt tearful as Peggy picked up one and I remember telling her: 'You take that home and keep that in memory of Lindsey.
Now that my own daughter is 21 too, it makes me realise even more what she lost that night. It's devastating. Forty-six seconds after the bomb on Pan Am Flight detonated, the aircraft's wings hit Sherwood Crescent, close to Mr Giesecke's Park Place home, at mph, disintegrating on impact and leaving a crater ft long and 30ft deep.
Witness: Peter Giesecke with debris from aircraft 'Clipper Maid of the Seas' that had taken off half an hour earlier from London Heathrow. Just over the fence, in Rosebank Crescent, a large chunk of the fuselage also took out whole sides of properties. Previously unseen photographs, taken by Mr Giesecke the morning after the incident and published today in the Scottish Mail on Sunday, show the extent of the destruction to the quiet neighbourhood in which he still lives on the eastern edge of the town.
He said: 'We'd all had to evacuate our homes because it was too dangerous to stay there, but I'd gone back the next day to get some bits and pieces. That's when I picked up my camera and decided to take some photographs of the horror around me. When I saw the crater where my neighbours' houses had been, the damage to homes next to mine and the debris all around, it finally hit me how close we had come to being wiped out ourselves.
Mr Giesecke, who had just put his children to bed before the atrocity, recalled: 'As the fuselage hit the streets around, the windows at the back of our house blew in, the lights went out and we were in darkness. The children came down the stairs screaming. There was glass and debris all over the place, as well as a strong smell of aviation fuel. There were bodies all over the place.
But forever on my mind is Lindsey, although I didn't learn her name until much later. She was lying on my hedge face down. She was wearing a blue top, a sweater.
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