Three decades later, Lockerbie’s hidden angels relive the rescue of their brethren’s remains and bringing them to kever Yisrael Photos: Family Archives
Air-traffic controller Alan Topp sat with his eyes fixed to the radar screen, watching the white marker indicating that Pan Am Flight 103, which had taken off from London’s Heathrow airport 27 minutes before, had crossed into Scottish airspace on its voyage across the Atlantic to New York. It was a pretty standard route, nothing too interesting that December night over three decades ago, but suddenly, Topp shot to full attention: The radar screen showed not just one blip where Flight 103 should have been, but four. Topp tried to contact the pilot of the aircraft, but there was no response. He buzzed the oceanic controllers responsible for the plane’s Atlantic crossing, but they too had lost contact with the plane. As his colleagues gathered around his screen, they would soon learn that those four blips represented the cockpit, the fuselage, an engine, and a wing hurtling to earth. A bomb had detonated from a Samsonite suitcase in the forward baggage hold, tearing the Boeing 747 apart at 31,000 feet in the air. Emergency procedures were never initiated, no oxygen masks had dropped down, and the cockpit levers were still set to cruise control.