Journalists recall bomb atrocity

When Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the skies over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 it took everyone by surprise, including the media.

Here, four journalists, Willie Johnston, Doug Archibald, Atholl Duncan and Colin Blane, recall their involvement in the worst terrorist atrocity on UK soil.

I remember the stench of aviation fuel and trailing through unidentified debris - but thankfully, the darkness shielded me from the horrific realities daybreak would reveal

In subsequent days I was deeply affected by witnessing the crashed nose cone and, despairingly, the helicopter ferrying bodies down from the crags behind the church

In the next few hours and days, many images still haunt me - in one garden, a row of seats from the plane, the passengers, who had been sleeping, held in by seatbelts

When I got there, I was, for a few moments, lost for words. I could make out the shape of a curving street but the houses on the western edge of it were no longer there

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