Lockerbie Haunting final moments of the doomed Pan-Am 103 flight - Britain's deadliest terror attack

Daily Mail : Sitting at 31,000ft over the north of England, former Vietnam War fighter pilot Raymond Wagner toggled the radio transmit button on the right hand side of his Boeing 747-121’s control yoke. ‘Clipper 103 requesting oceanic clearance’, intoned the co-pilot using the modulated aviation voice he’d honed over several decades flying.

On the other end of the connection was Alan Topp, the Scottish Air Traffic Controller working more than 50 miles away in Prestwick, west of Glasgow.

The time was 6.58pm on December 21, 1988.

They were the last words recorded from Pan Am Flight 103. 

Within five minutes of that transmission, all 243 passengers and 16 crew aboard were dead, killed by a bomb that destroyed the aircraft as it flew over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, a small town just north of the English border. Eleven people on the ground were also killed as large sections of the plane plunged 31,000ft and crashed into residential streets below.

In extraordinary detail, DEEP DIVE reconstructs how the deadliest terror attack in Britain’s history unfolded’.

Countdown to disaster

Armed with intelligence about a looming terror plot in the skies, West German police raided a safe house on October 26, 1988 hoping to avoid an atrocity and save hundreds of lives. Inside, they found a bomb hidden inside a Toshiba BoomBeat 453 radio. Police believed the bomb, containing 300g of Semtex and intentionally designed to explode mid-air, was destined to tear apart an aircraft. The warning was passed to international security agencies. Images of the device were shared with governments and aviation watchdogs, alerting them to the threat.

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