Lockerbie flying sites
Note: This map only gives the position of Lockerbie town within the UK.
LOCKERBIE see also BALGRAY HOUSE
LOCKERBIE: Temporary aerodrome?
NOTES: On the 19th July 1933 Sir Alan Cobham’s No.1 Tour held a display in/near Lockerbie.
LOCKERBIE: Infamous air accident site
NOTES: This town deserves to be mentioned because it became world famous for a few days when the world press and TV stations focused on this previously unheard of small town when a Pan Am Boeing 747 outbound from Heathrow suffered a bomb exploding in a forward baggage hold. This brought about the first major act of international terrorism to take place in British skies. It seems almost certain the terrorists miscalculated and the bomb was meant to go off over the North Atlantic making retrieval of the wreckage very difficult if not impossible.
Instead various substantial parts of the wreckage landed on the town causing much loss of life on the ground too. This did however enable the investigators to eventually, (after many years of painstaking and minutely detailedresearch), pinpoint the perpetrators of this wholesale carnage.
STILL IN EXISTENCE
I have seen the remains of the forward left-hand fuselage which was reassembled by the AAIB and still stands in homage, I suppose, to those that died in one of their hangars at FARNBOROUGH.
On an arranged visit it was explained and graphically pointed out in detail exactly how the AAIB investigators managed to identify the exact location of the bomb.
A TRIBUTE
To me it seems doubly fitting, (in this 'Guide'), to make at least a mention of the invaluable, very often gruesome, but totally necessary work undertaken by the AAIB, (Air Accident Investigation Board).
This 'Guide' is of course intended to be a celebration of flight in the UK but we must always remember the human cost involved when, for all sorts of reasons, tragedy has struck time and time again. It is through the unceasing work of many official aviation accident investigating bodies around the world, (and the British AAIB is amongst the best), that lessons can be learnt and future flight safety improved.
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