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Did Dr. Jim Swire Really Sneak a Fake Bomb onto an Airplane? Lockerbie Story Explained
Dr. Swire's efforts to sneak a fake bomb onto an airplane as a secret security test, explained.
A few days before Christmas 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 took off from London’s Heathrow airport, headed for New York City. Approximately 38 minutes into the flight, a bomb exploded inside the cargo hold, punching a 20-inch hole in the fuselage near the cockpit. The plane broke up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 259 passengers, 16 crew, and 11 people on the ground.
Peacock’s dramatization, Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, tells one version of the events leading up to and the years following the tragic bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The show, which premiered January 2, 2025 and is streaming now, follows the efforts of Dr. Jim Swire (Colin Firth), whose daughter Flora was one of the disaster’s victims. As part of his efforts, Swire maintained a dogged desire for transparency and pushed officials for better airport security. In the course of that effort, Swire even carried a fake bomb on an airplane to highlight a continued lack of security — an event viewers can see dramatized in the series.
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Dr. Jim Swire really carried a fake bomb on a plane, as depicted in Lockerbie: A Search for Truth
After the Flight 103 explosion, the airplane broke up into several large pieces and many more small ones. When the fractured bits of the plane had descended from 31,000 feet and finally hit the ground, they were scattered over more than 800 square miles. More than 1,000 people combed over the landscape to reconstruct the plane and the sequence of events.
Within the recovered wreckage, investigators found pieces of charred luggage believed to contain the bomb. Ultimately, they tied the event to a modified Toshiba radio cassette player (a small boombox) tucked inside a Samsonite suitcase.
Swire learned everything he could about the device that brought down Flight 103, going so far as to build a recreation himself. He built a fake bomb inside a portable stereo, including a dummy detonator, timer, batteries, a pressure switch, and a payload of fake explosives. Where the real bombers used Semtex, Swire packed his bomb with the harmless chemical marzipan. You can see Swire’s fake bomb as part of the Glasgow Museum collection.
RELATED: The Story of Lockerbie and Pan Am Flight 103, Explained
The final step in Swire’s plan was to take that fake bomb on a flight from London to NYC. He even left some of the marzipan visible from the outside, hoping it might tip off airport security that something was afoot. It didn’t. The stereo was removed and inspected but aroused no suspicion and Dr. Swire went on his way with the fake bomb in tow.
“This was not a prank. It was a serious experiment, and unfortunately it succeeded. Here, 18 months after Lockerbie, one can take an identical device through security. I find that very depressing,” Swire said in an interview at the time, via the Los Angeles Times.
Who is responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing?
Officially, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was carried out by Abdelbasset al-Megrahi and others, in an act of state sponsored terrorism. Megrahi was convicted in a special trial held in the Netherlands and the government of Libya officially took responsibility for the attack without admitting any official sanction.
In 2022 Abu Agila Mas’ud was charged as a coconspirator, accused of delivering the bomb to Megrahi and setting the timer in advance of the attack. He is awaiting trial.
Lockerbie: A Search For Truth is streaming now on Peacock.
