Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed over Lockerbie

On the night of December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was climbing over southern Scotland, bound from London to New York, when a bomb hidden in the cargo hold detonated. The Boeing 747, named Clipper Maid of the Seas, broke apart at roughly 31,000 feet, scattering wreckage across the town of Lockerbie.

Everyone aboard died: 243 passengers and 16 crew. On the ground, falling debris killed a further 11 residents, bringing the toll to 270 people from 21 countries. It remains the deadliest terror attack on British soil.

Investigators traced the blast to Semtex explosive concealed in a Toshiba radio-cassette player and packed inside a Samsonite suitcase. The suitcase had been routed through Malta and Frankfurt before reaching London with no passenger to accompany it. The inquiry that followed became the longest in the history of Scotland’s prosecutors. In 2001, Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the 270 murders, the only person ever found guilty in the case; he was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 and died in 2012.