No Yule Break in Hunt for Air Disaster Clues

LONDON — Hundreds of specialists, ranging from forensic experts to dog handlers, planned to work straight through Christmas as the search continued Saturday in southern Scotland both for clues to the cause of Britain’s worst air disaster and for the bodies of victims of the crash of Pan Am Flight 103.

More than 600 police, troops and mountain rescue teams fanned out at first light for the third straight day, looking for more than 30 bodies still missing. A police spokesman said Saturday night that 84 more bodies had been recovered, bringing the total to 239.

The searchers used dogs to comb the forested hills around Lockerbie, the tiny village that bore the brunt of the impact Wednesday when the Pan American World Airways jumbo jet broke up in midair less than an hour after takeoff from London and plummeted to Earth.

Fiery Wreckage

All 258 passengers and crew aboard the Boeing 747 died, as did as many as 15 local residents trapped when fiery wreckage rained down on their houses and cars. Six other individuals previously feared dead have now been accounted for, police said Saturday.

In an unprecedented special Christmas message released Saturday, Queen Elizabeth II expressed her sympathy over the Pan Am crash, as well as a deadly train collision in London and the devastating Armenian earthquake earlier this month.

The disasters “destroyed the lives of many . . . looking forward to celebrating Christmas with families and friends,” the queen said, adding that she hoped her message, recorded in addition to her traditional holiday greetings, would comfort those overwhelmed by grief.

In Washington, U.S. officials said the CIA station chief in Beirut, who was not identified, was on the doomed flight. There was no indication that the crash was linked to his presence.

Three State Department officials, including two from Beirut, were among the victims.

No cause for the tragedy has yet been determined, despite widespread speculation that the flight was sabotaged by terrorists. An alternate theory holds that the plane suffered a massive, midair structural failure, and investigators from the U.S. and British governments, Pan Am, Boeing and engine maker Pratt & Whitney are hoping to learn the truth by analyzing bits of wreckage and the victims’ remains.

On Friday, a spokesman for the Ministry of Transport said analysis of Flight 103’s cockpit voice recorder revealed “a faint, unexplained noise” at the end of the tape. Before that, the official said, “there were no abnormal noises” and “nothing in the conversations (of the flight crew) to indicate anything was wrong.”

Recorder Being Analyzed

The contents of the plane’s flight data recorder are still being analyzed, meanwhile. A mountain of twisted metal and other wreckage already gathered by searchers was awaiting transport Saturday to the British Air Accidents Investigations branch headquarters in Farnborough, about 35 miles southwest of London.

“Nothing will change over Christmas,” Police Superintendent Angus Kennedy told newsmen in Lockerbie on Saturday. “The search will go on and on. There are no plans at all to scale down the search operation.”

Indeed, the search is spreading over a widening area. Debris from the doomed airliner has been found on the Northumberland coast of northern England, some 70 miles east of the main crash site. Searchers also were reported Saturday to be combing Kielder Forest, 30 miles from the site.

American officials planned to man crisis centers in both Lockerbie and London throughout the Christmas weekend, backing up representatives of various U.S. agencies involved in the crash probe and trying to assist relatives of the victims.

Pan Am has flown scores of relatives to Britain, and about 30 already have gone to Lockerbie against the urging of local officials. On Saturday they got their first look at the primary impact site--a huge gash in the ground where the main passenger section of Flight 103 obliterated a half dozen houses at the end of a cul-de-sac.

‘Our Own Personal Need’

Asked why they had come to Lockerbie, Joe Horgan, acting as spokesman for the American relatives, replied: “First and foremost, to assist in the identification process of the bodies, and for our own personal need to be near our loved ones. . . . I think you feel better once you actually see the site for yourself.”

Horgan described the relatives’ state of mind as mixed. “We run quite a gamut of emotions--grief, loss, frustration, anger,” he said. But he praised their treatment by officials and townspeople, saying, “Everybody is very supportive.”

The Americans have not been able to see any of the bodies yet, because none has been positively identified. And, according to U.S. Ambassador to Britain Charles H. Price II, the wait may go on for much longer.

Meeting about two dozen more relatives of American crash victims in London on Saturday, Price said it would be “some days, at best, and maybe much longer” before the bodies can be returned for burial, according to an aide who was present at the session.

Some May Not Be Recovered

The relatives “won’t be able to do what they want, which is to go up (to Lockerbie), claim their loved ones and go home,” the aide said. Some victims’ remains may never be recovered, Price told the relatives.