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Day
6
Season Six Research Files
Episode Eleven
4:00pm - 5:00pm
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In late December 1988, the British Ministry of Transport warned British airlines, airports and some foreign carriers about a new type of terrorist bomb disguised as a cassette player that was really packed with the explosive Semtex. The memo contained an elaborate list of clues for detecting such devices, including the failure of the cassette player to function normally and more wiring than usual for a portable player. Unfortunately, the alert didn’t reach Pan Am in time to prevent the explosion of Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland a few days later. It was concluded that the bomb containing 400 grams of Semtex had been inside a twin-speaker Toshiba Bombeat RT-SF 16 radio-cassette player. A forensic scientist later reconstructed the player and determined that not only could the machine still work, but that it could have held more explosive content without being detected. |
In 1972, two British girls unknowingly carried a bomb aboard an El Al flight headed for Tel Aviv. Two men they had met in Rome planned to take the flight with them but backed out at the last minute. As a gesture of friendship, the men gave the girls a cassette player that the girls didn’t realize was outfitted with a bomb timed to explode. A flight delay and the fact that the girls had to check the cassette player in their luggage caused the timing of the bomb to only start a fire that was quickly extinguished. The plane landed safely.
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