Archive: how The Times reported the disaster | Archive: eyewitness

Lockerbie knows that it will never be allowed to forget the night of December 21, 1988. Like Aberfan, Omagh, Dunblane - the little places struck by disasters – its name is for ever linked to one terrible moment. In Lockerbie’s case it was 7.03pm, when Pan Am Flight 103 dropped from the sky.

You cannot walk the streets today without the reminders: Sherwood Crescent, where the wing and fuel tank ploughed into the houses and evaporated them, leaving a massive crater, reeking of aviation fuel; Rosebank Crescent, where the fuselage came down and scattered bodies across gardens, on the rooftops and the hillsides around.

Tundergarth, four miles outside the town, is where the nose cone came to rest, its name, Maid of the Seas, written plainly on the side, to become the unforgettable memorial to the 270 who died: pilots, stewards, passengers and the 11 Lockerbie people who perished with them.

These things are remembered in the town, but the memories are not oppressive. Most people I spoke to preferred to talk about the way that Lockerbie has moved on, its new houses, the jobs created, its hopes for the future. The neat memorial garden at the Dryfesdale Cemetery, with its granite monument bearing the names of all who died – “their ages range from 2 months to 82 years and they came from 21 nations” – is an intensely moving place, not because it is imposing, but because it is so ordinary, with its neat paths and newly planted trees.

Many of the relatives who have come here, and drawn comfort from the long views out to the Southern Uplands, have commissioned plaques that try to encapsulate the lives lost: “An old-fashioned gentleman”, “Killed in the line of duty”, “Goodnight, sweet Kate” are among the inscriptions.

At Tundergarth, a tiny new chapel has a vellum book with the name of each victim carefully inscribed, and another, telling the story of who they were and what they had achieved.

The links between the town and the families who come back year after year to remember those they lost have grown, and most of them record their gratitude for the support they have received. One mother used to come every year to Tundergarth, cross a fence and walk 33 paces to the spot where her daughter died, and stand there, silently remembering. Two years ago she died. But this year her second daughter came over to do the same: the chain remains unbroken. In the Tundergarth chapel, a note in the visitors’ book, written only ten days ago, records: “Alexia, you fell here, sheltered by the people of Lockerbie. God made the Scots a wee bit better.”

George Stobbs, now 74, was the police inspector in charge of the Lockerbie subdivision that night. He has told his story many times, because he feels he owes it to successive generations to remind them of the enormity of what happened; but it still has the capacity to shock. He remembers the first body he came across, a woman lying in the street, her clothes torn off. “I thought she must have been killed by debris; I had no idea she had fallen out of the sky.” He saw hedges on fire, the flames from a ruptured gas main shooting up through the paving stones, an iron gate in Sherwood Crescent melting in front of his eyes, the crater, like a volcano, belching fire, the tyres blazing at Townfoot garage right on top of the petrol tanks, which miraculously never went up, a fireman holding a useless hose because by sheer bad luck a piece of the aircraft had severed the main water supply.

When word came in from Prestwick that the radar had recorded five blips showing the disintegration of Pan Am 103 at 35,000ft, Stobbs knew that it must be sabotage. “By 8pm it had become a murder inquiry,” he says. That meant, among other things, marking each body where it lay. Many were naked, stripped of their clothes as they fell through the sky, and each had to be examined and documented. At a case conference next day Mr Stobbs asked his men if they needed any support. “There was no counselling in those days, and most of them seemed OK,” he said. “But I noticed one young chap, who was very silent. He said he was fine, but then he broke down. He’d never seen a girl naked before, and now he had, and she was dead.”

Today, Lockerbie has not only been rebuilt, but is growing, its population about 4,500. In Sherwood Crescent, the only reminder of the past is a gap along one side, where five houses were destroyed. The families of those who died asked that it be left open rather than rebuilt, so a memorial garden stands in their place.

Meanwhile, the legacy of that December night remains in the links built between Lockerbie Academy and the University of Syracuse in New York, which lost 35 students in the disaster. Each year two pupils from Lockerbie go out to Syracuse to spend a year there. At the same time Syracuse has established 35 scholarships for its own students. Three years ago, Erin McLaughlin, from Lockerbie, not only won the opportunity of going out to Syracuse, but won one of the thirty-five scholarships. She went on to gain a PhD at New York University. “Not bad for a wee girl from southwest Scotland,” says Lockerbie’s headmaster, Graham Herbert.

Interest in the Syracuse programme has never been greater, with more than twenty applicants for the two places this year. I spoke to two of them, Dora Lewis and Craig Stoddart, both 17, born three years after the Lockerbie disaster. “It’s never been forgotten,” Craig said. “We are such a small community that everyone knows someone who was there.” But it has also left a legacy. Dora explained: “It gives our school this link with America, something very special that not many others have. It was a tragedy, but it has left something good. It is right for us to remember it.”

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