"A JUMBO jet carrying 273 people crashed into a Scottish town last night, killing all on board in Britain's worst air disaster.
Scores more are feared dead after the airliner ploughed through a densely populated housing estate in the market town of Lockerbie. Wreckage rained on to a busy dual carriageway, leaving a huge crater beside the A74 Glasgow-Carlisle road and setting numbers of cars on fire.
An RAF spokesman said there were no survivors from two rows of houses destroyed by wreckage. Forty homes were said to have been destroyed. A spokesman for RAF Pitreavie, the maritime headquarters coordinating the airlift of medical and rescue teams, said: "There are casualties on the ground."
The cause of the disaster remained a mystery early today, but eyewitnesses spoke of a mid-air explosion before the crash, prompting fears that a bomb had blown the airliner out of the sky. A group of United States serviceman were on board.
The Jumbo's cockpit was found in a field four-and-a-half miles from Lockerbie, still eerily intact but surrounded by bodies. The most urgent need for investigators will be to find the aircraft's "black box" flight recorder. The Pan Am Boeing 747 was en route to New York from London Heathrow when it dropped from 31,000ft.
The Chief Constable of Dumfries and Galloway, Mr John Boyd, told a Press conference at 1am today that wreckage was spread over an area within a 10-mile radius. There were no survivors from the wreckage. Mr Boyd said bodies had been found at six locations, but it was too early to give any figure for deaths on the ground: "I am not aware of the number of local people involved."
Some of the wreckage had fallen on the A74 and at least five vehicles had been caught up in the carnage: "It may well be that there are fatalities there."
Wreckage had fallen in six different areas in and around Lockerbie, and some had been found several miles outside the town: "There are bodies at each of these locations."
Mr Boyd said that he was not aware at this stage that any other aircraft had been involved other than the 747, but that was still under investigation. Casualties had been taken to Dumfries Infirmary.
Mr Boyd said: "We are continuing a ground search and a helicopter search at the locations I have spoken of. The difficulties we are experiencing are the darkness and the fact that the bodies and the wreckage are spread out over a wide area. All my resources are widely stretched at the moment.
"It's such a major disaster that I have not hesitated in calling in as much help from outside the area as possible."
Asked if there was any possibility of survivors, he added: "I am very pessimistic about that."
In total 259 people aboard Pan Am flight 103, and 11 on the ground, died in the crash which took place 38 minutes after take-off from Heathrow. The debris from the aircraft was scattered across 845 square miles and the impact reached 1.6 on the Richter scale.
The subsequent police investigation was the biggest ever mounted in Scotland and became a murder inquiry when evidence of a bomb was found. Two men accused of being Libyan intelligence agents were eventually charged with planting the bomb.
Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was jailed for life in January 2001 following an 84-day trial under Scottish law, at Camp Zeist in Holland. His alleged accomplice, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was found not guilty.
In 2002 Al Megrahi's appeal against conviction was rejected.

Charlie Chaplin dies at 88
1977 In the early hours of Christmas Day, Charlie Chaplin, perhaps the greatest cinema legend of them all, died aged 88 at his Swiss manor at Corsier-sur-Vevey. His wife Oona, daughter of the late playwright Eugene O'Neill, and seven of their eight children were present.
The couple's eldest daughter, actress Geraldine, was abroad filming in Spain but his son Sidney, the eldest son by the second of his four marriages, was at his bedside.
As actor, writer, director, producer, composer and choreographer Chaplin left his legacy in the shape of 80 films including favourites The Gold Rush, City Lights, and Limelight. Born into poverty in London in 1889, his parents Charles Chaplin senior and Hannah Hill were music hall entertainers who separated shortly after his birth. From his screen debut in 1914, to his last completed film in 1967, Chaplin helped to shape the modern film industry.

Missing minister found alive
1974On the day before Christmas, the "drowned" John Stonehouse, a former government minister, was found alive and going by a false name in Australia.
Stonehouse, 49, had faked his own death, vanishing while swimming in the sea – leaving no trace but for the pile of clothes he left behind on the beach – on a business trip to Miami Beach on November 20.
The re-emergence of the Labour MP for Walsall North, once tipped as a future Labour leader, stunned Parliament and his colleagues at Westminster.
It turned out Stonehouse was planning to set up a new life in Australia with his former secretary Sheila Buckley, a 28-year-old divorcée. He was deported to Britain where in August 1976 he was convicted on 18 counts of theft, fraud and deception, after a marathon 68-day trial, and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. Ms Buckley got two years, suspended for two years, for her part in Mr Stonehouse's get-rich-quick schemes. He left prison three years later.
The couple married in 1981. He died in 1988, aged 62.

Letter

'Christmas is to me as to all real Christians in
the world a feast of love and peace. It should be
peace amongst all nations in the whole world'

From: Ernest Smith, Sandhill Farm, Holme on Spalding Moor, York.
I enclose a copy of a letter written to my parents which I think may be of interest. As you will gather from the contents, it was written by Fred, a PoW who was one of several who we were glad to have had working on our farm and was about to return to Germany to an unknown situation and future. We never heard from him again as he returned to a Germany behind the Iron Curtain. The contents of Fred's letter give a touching reminder of how war affects the lives of ordinary people.
One of the PoWs who worked and lived on my wife's father's farm in the village still keeps in regular contact with her family and is now well into his eighties.
We thoroughly enjoy reading the items each Tuesday and the memories the articles evoke.

No 73 POW Camp
Stoorwood
December 1947
Dear Mr and Mrs Smith
I feel I must send you a personal note of thanks for your kindness. My knowledge of English is not great enough to express everything I want to say, therefore a friend of mine translated my letter from German into English.
I wish you all a happy Christmas. Christmas is to me as to all real Christians in the world a feast of love and peace. It should be peace amongst all nations in the whole world, because every country needs peace.
Having spent five years off home, it is a great honour to spend Christmas with you. I wish to thank you most sincerely for the kind interest you were good enough to extend to me. Of course five years is a long time especially if you are parted from your dear family, and I shall be really glad when I am re-united.
I remember with pleasure past years I had spent peacefully at home. Before the war I had a good job, was satisfied and lived happily. But memory is all I have got, life is not easy, as we say in German "Ohne Fleiss kein Preis" (proverb). I lost much during the war, things which were dear and valuable, but they're gone forever.
I don't complain about as I got still confidence to re-start a new life under certain conditions, and there will come happy days once more. I am PoW three and a half years already, you probably won't realise what that means.
A man behind barbed wire is expelled from the human party, he is just a number on any sheet and he only exists in ledgers, he is a source of man power and doesn't lead an individual life. Therefore a PoW has different views as a free person. It is easy to make a prisoner satisfied and happy, he is full of joy about anything and keeps everything longer as other people do. We are grateful and don't forget good deeds. I could write a lot about our sorrows but I will not waste paper. I shall always remember with great pleasure the time spent on your farm, hoping you were satisfied with me.
My one regret is I cannot work for you any longer. I feel I cannot speak too highly of what you have done for me. Working for you has been throughout a source of interest and enjoyment. I know, there was a lot still to be done but I can't help. I am sorry as I could not do everything as I liked to do, especially the things for Christmas because there was a shortage of material.
But what I have made I did carefully, intending to please you. I don't know whether or not I get time to pay a visit to you before I leave your island, therefore once again accept my thanks for everything. When I learned I must leave you I had tears in my eyes, I shall keep you in my memory forever.
When I arrive at home I don't know yet where to stay and what to do. If you like you can write me a letter I should like at any time. Closing that note with all the best to you all, wishing you every success in farming.
My kind regards to Betty, Lilian, Dorothy, Ernest and George.