Early-summer haze hangs over a little-known airfield in the English midlands. In the midday stillness a small gathering waits, gazes and fixes lenses intently on a white Boeing 747 about 400m (1,300ft) away across the grass. Suddenly, the aircraft shudders and, just as the soundwave from the destructive explosion reaches the crowd, the massive fuselage bursts open, ejecting debris, then crumples and sags. Silence falls as the dust descends around the broken hull. The surreal aura is enhanced when a scientist declares the experiment a success. It is the climax of a research programme to enable aircraft to survive terrorist bombs, and this scene of devastation is, he says, what his research team had been expecting. Meanwhile, there is a car parked near the airfield gathering, and stickers in its windows pronounce: "Lockerbie. Let the truth be known." If technology tested on that May day had been applied to the Pan American Boeing 747 blown up by a terrorist bomb over L