Memorial to the Lockerbie Air Disaster , 1988 . Sherwood Crescent , Lockerbie , Dumfries and Galloway , Scotland.
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London's Heathrow International Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. On Wednesday 21 December 1988, the aircraft flying this route, a Boeing 747-121 named Clipper Maid of the Seas, was destroyed by a bomb. The remains landed in and around the town of Lockerbie in southern Scotland. In the subsequent investigation of the crash, forensic experts determined that about 1 lb (450 g) of plastic explosive had been detonated in the airplane's forward cargo hold, triggering a sequence of events that led to the rapid destruction of the aircraft. Winds of 100 knots (190 km/h) scattered victims and debris along a 130 km (80 mile) corridor over an area of 2189 km² (845 square miles). The death toll was 270 people from 21 countries. On the ground, 11 Lockerbie residents were killed when the wing section hit 13 Sherwood Crescent at more than 500 mph (800 km/h) and exploded, creating a crater 47 metres (155 ft) long and with a volume of 560 m³ (730 yd³),[15] vaporising several houses and their foundations, and damaging 21 others so badly they had to be demolished. Four members of one family, Jack and Rosalind Somerville and their children Paul and Lynsey, died when their house at 15 Sherwood Crescent exploded. A fireball rose above the houses and moved toward the nearby Glasgow–Carlisle A74 main road, scorching cars in the southbound lanes, leading motorists and local residents to believe that there had been a meltdown at the nearby Chapelcross nuclear power station. The only house left standing intact in the area belonged to Father Patrick Keegans, Lockerbie's Roman Catholic priest. The image shows the memorial garden in Sherwood Crescent, created at the scene of the disaster.
Size: 3377px × 5065px
Location: Sherwood Crescent , Lockerbie , Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe.
Photo credit: © Stan Pritchard / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: air, crescent, disaster, lockerbie, memorial, sherwood
