Merged al Megrahi and the Lockerbie bombing

[Rolfe]

Rolfe, can I direct your attention to page C 11 of the Appendices of Lockerbie Air Accident Investigation that you so kindly pointed out to me and ask you opinion on this passage.

If 2 radar stations pick it up, it is not spurious. What is your opinion on this?

Further to do this. You can see the anomalous [not spurious!] radar return on pages 59-61 of the pdf - or Figures C-14 onwards.

It also shows the plane immediately falling apart and parts shooting out in all directions.

I'd need some time to study that. Is this going to be some version of "the cause of the crash wasn't 450g Semtex in a Samsonite suitcase, it was something else"? 'Cos there are quite a few of these, and it would be helpful to know which one we're dealing with.

The breakup of the plane was so catastrophic that initial opinion had it pegged as either a much larger explosive device (I think 60kg was a popular meme at one point), or possibly an extraordinarily catastrophic mechanical failure (there is one theory which blames the entire thing on a cargo door failure).

This does not seem to have been borne out by the evidence that was subsequently discovered. The evidence found on the ground by a lot of individuals painstakingly litter-picking large swathes of countryside indicated a small device which by a cruel coincidence (at least if you believe the Malta story) just happened to have been positioned in the worst place possible to rupture the plane's skin and let pressure and wind resistance do the rest.

Now if you want to propose something different, and it sounds to me as if you're pitching to have the plane shot down, then I'm listening. But I'm going to be very hard to convince that all the debris that was scattered across the countryside was somehow faked and substituted and manipulated, and the entire AAIB report a fraud except for the parts where they stupidly left in the incriminating bits regardless, and these are of course completely trustworthy....

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

OK, I read it. Radar picked up an anomalous blip for a single paint on the third-last radar return before the explosion. Two of the four stations saw it. The AAIB report records this and offers no explanation.

What's your suggested explanation? Broomsticks apart, that is.

Rolfe.

ETA: If this is going where I think it's going, it would be better carrying on with it in the "was the bomb suitcase a fabrication or mistake" thread, because that's where parallel discussion has been located.