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Pan Am Flight 103 Audiovisual Collection

An inventory of the collection at the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives at Syracuse University


Finding aid created by: Cara A. Howe
Date: 2011

Historical Note

At 6:25 pm on December 21, 1988, Pan Am's Clipper Maid of the Seas departed Heathrow Airport in London for New York City's JFK Airport. One half hour later at 7:02 pm London time, as the Boeing 747 leveled off at 31,000 feet just north of the England-Scotland border, an explosion blew a basketball-sized hole in the fuselage. The plane broke apart and plummeted to earth. All 259 passengers of Flight 103 and 11 residents of the town of Lockerbie, Scotland were killed. Among those killed aboard Pan Am Flight 103 were 35 students returning home from a semester of study abroad through Syracuse University.

Before long the world would know that it was not a mechanical failure or foul weather that brought down the plane, but a terrorist bomb comprised of Semtex plastic explosive planted in a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder and placed inside a Samsonite suitcase stowed in the plane's forward cargo hold. Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi and fellow Libyan Intelligence agent Lamin Khalifah Fhimah were indicted by the United States in 1991, formally charged by the Scottish authorities in 1999 and tried by an international court at Camp Zeist, Netherlands beginning in 2000. Al-Megrahi's conviction was handed down in 2001. Fhimah was found not guilty. Al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds in 2009, after a terminal cancer diagnosis gave him three months to live. He died three years later. The investigation of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 remains open.

Scope and Content Note

The Pan Am Flight 103 Audiovisual Collection contains general audiovisual materials pertaining to the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Whenever possible, audiovisual materials pertaining to individual victims, their families, or individual organizations or projects are available in the respective collections.

Materials in this collection consist of recordings of broadcast and commercial media such as news clips, interviews, television specials, feature films, and documentaries; footage of memorial services, memorial dedications, and press conferences; and music and other creative works dedicated to the victims of the disaster. The collection has been divided into series for Audio materials and Audiovisual materials.

Alternative Formats

Selected materials from this collection have been digitized. Please contact the Archives for further information on accessing these materials.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions:

Please note that the collection is housed off-site, and advance notice is required to allow time to have the materials brought to the Reading Room on campus.

Access to audiovisual material requires advance notice to produce a use copy.

Please note that some materials may be restricted at donor's request.

Use Restrictions:

Written permission must be obtained from the Pan Am Flight 103 Archives and all relevant rights holders before publishing quotations, excerpts or images from any materials in this collection.

Related Material

Recordings pertaining to specific individuals and organizations, including Andrew McClune, Thomas Britton Schultz, Richard Paul Monetti, and the Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars have been removed from this collection and returned to the appropriate, respective collections at the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives. "Syracuse University Shaw Dormitory 4th Floor in Thornden Park Spring (Theodora Cohen)" (formerly pa103_audiovisual_0112) was removed from the collection and added to the Theodora Cohen Family Papers.

The Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives contains additional audiovisual materials pertaining to the disaster throughout the collections. Whenever possible, recordings pertaining to invidividual victims and their families can be found in their respective victims and families collections. Recordings of Remembrance Scholar Convocations and other Remembrance Week Programming can be found in the Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars Collection.

Selected Search Terms

Names

Syracuse University -- History.
Syracuse University.

Subjects

Pan Am Flight 103 Bombing Incident, 1988.
Terrorism -- Government Policy -- United States.
Terrorism -- Government Policy -- United States -- Case Studies.
Terrorism -- Government Policy -- United States -- History.
Terrorism -- History -- 20th Century.
Lockerbie (Scotland)

Types of Material

Audiocassettes.
Betacam (TM)
Blu-ray discs.
Compact discs.
DVDs.
U-matic (TM)
VHS.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Pan Am Flight 103 Audiovisual Collection
Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives
Syracuse University Libraries

Acquisition Information

Gift of Judith O'Rourke, Time Warner Cable, Sally Berrell, Bob Weitzel, Helen Engelhardt, Dan and Susan Cohen, Richard Marquise, John Wallace, BBC Television, FamilyLife Network, Mary O'Brien, Video Action Fund, Carl Johnson, Greg Sides, News Ten Now (YNN), Syracuse Post-Standard, Frank Duggan, and Colin Dorrance and transfer from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication between 1996 and 2014.

Processing Information

Some recordings were removed from their original cases and placed in new ones. Notes included in some items' original housings were enclosed in the new cases. All materials were placed in acid free boxes.

Arrangement

The collection is arranged alphabetically by title.

Table of Contents

Audio materials

Audiovisual materials

Inventory