bigdave789:
I remember driving past two days after this had happened, the fields on the other side of what was the old A74 were strewn with wreak ah and there were dozens of soldiers picking up the pieces.
I remember thinking at the time that with the miles of open country in that area it lands on the only town.
Same with us,
My Sister had recently moved to Uddingston, it was her 1st Xmas up there and we were going up, on the night it happened we saw it on the news and tried to contact her, they had had a power cut and the phone lines were down too, we thought the worst,
The next day we got intouch and she was none thr wiser as she hadnt seen the news.
Driving up a couple of days later and seeing the scene was horrific, still clearly etched on my mind.
I was at Air Scouts that Wednesday evening, one of the leaders had made this box with a combination on it and invented some game where we had to work out how to decode the information on the Black box recorder from a plane that had just crashed.
Poor guy had been working for some time on this excercise and it was well recieved by all. I think he went home, saw the news and felt sick as a dog.
When I 1st took the avaiation security course the guy who was the tutor was one of the 1st on the scene at Lockerbie because back then he worked in aviation accident investigation. (Lockerbie was one of the main reasons for security going through the roof when delivering ‘known’ cargo etc) He told us about getting reports of wreckage strewn around the countryside and having to get in a Land Rover and going to find it…at one point he broke down in tears as he described finding a row of seats with bodies still strapped to them. I asked him why he was still in the business if it upset him the way it did, and he told me that every time he talked about it it was cathartic for him, and that also he was sure that he was preventing anything like it happening again.
it was a mad couple of weeks…didn’t the Donington crash on the M1 happen just days later?
aye a bad time for all…my dad was pulled off the highway maintenance winter rota at the roads depot and became the driver for the investigators from down south…he reconned the worst part after the deaths etc was filling in the hole where the houses next to the a74 was ,he said the smell/taste from the fuel oil etc was the worst ever …he reconned most o the guys that worked there were ill later in life. jimmy ex Lockerbie boy.