How bomb was hidden on board plane which killed 270 in 'deadliest UK terror attack'

On 21 December,1988, Pan American flight 103 took off from London for New York City.

But as it made its northerly flight path, the Boeing 747 exploded around 30,000 feet above the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.

Killing all 259 passengers and crew members plus 11 people on the ground, it’s regarded as the ‘deadliest UK terror attack’.

A bomb was hidden in the cargo hold that caused the explosion and triggered the largest murder investigation in the history of Scottish policing.

With documentaries covering the story, The Bombing of Pan Am 103 has also just been added to Netflix today (30 July) which is a 2025 BBC drama starring Connor Swindells, Patrick J. Adams and James Harkness.

The show examines the lives of those impacted, the fallout of the explosion and the investigation into the perpetrators with the bomb attack regarded as an ‘assault on a symbol of the United States’.

A mock-up used at the trial to demonstrate where the bomb was hidden. (CIA)

Until 9/11, the Pan Am 103 bombing was one of the world’s most lethal acts of air terrorism and ‘one of the largest and most complex acts of international terrorism ever investigated by the FBI’.

The explosion rained debris over 845 square miles and created the largest-ever crime scene with responders recovering 319 tons of wreckage and thousands of pieces of evidence.

In 1989, months after the crash and end of the formal recovery effort, a piece of scorched shirt was discovered.

The CIA explain: “The piece contained a fragment of circuit board that the heat of the explosion had fused into the shirt’s polyester fabric.”

Investigators also found in the debris a tiny fragment that helped establish that the bomb had been placed inside a radio in a piece of luggage stored in the forward cargo hold of the aircraft.

A Mock-Up Of The Explosives-Loaded Toshiba Cassette Recorder. (Getty Images)

The plastic explosive that detonated in the hold ‘triggered a sequence of events that led to the rapid destruction of the aircraft’. And it was determined that the explosive device was concealed inside a Toshiba radio cassette recorder within the luggage.

The evidence led to two Libyan intelligence operatives and in 1991, the British and American governments charged Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah in the case. Fhimah was acquitted and al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001, sentenced to life in prison.

The Libyan government formally accepted responsibility and agreed to pay out nearly $3 billion to families of the victims.

Swindells in the series. (Netflix)

The Bombing of Pan Am 103 Series

Now streaming on Netflix, the six-part series was originally released by the BBC in 2025.

“Based on the testimony of those who were there, this is the true story of the collaboration between Scottish police and US law enforcement — and the families’ quest for justice,” Netflix says.

Sex Education’s Swindells plays detective sergeant Ed McCusker in the drama, one of the lead Scottish police officers.

He spoke to him in real life and told Tudum: “Meeting Ed was great. He’s an incredibly warm, friendly man who was so generous with his time.

“He had me around to lunch at his house. He was so generous with trying to recount as much as possible the events that occurred, lifting me up with as much support as he could.”