Word: plastics
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...some passenger seats and fragments from a metal bin in which checked luggage was packed and then rolled into the cargo hold of the Pan Am 747 at London's Heathrow Airport. Two pieces of the container's framework were pitted and showed other signs that a "high-performance plastic explosive" had erupted near them. Scotland Yard's antiterrorism branch and the FBI jointly assumed the difficult task of finding out how the bomb got on the plane...
Engineers at Seattle's Boeing Co., makers of the 747, said the explosive almost certainly had been placed in the aircraft's forward baggage hold, just in front of the section where the wings are attached to the fuselage. They estimated that about 10 lbs. of a plastic explosive had in effect decapitated the 747, instantly severing the cockpit and part of the first-class cabin from the rest of the plane. Because the forward luggage compartment is next to the main electronics bay, the explosion instantaneously cut off all communications, electricity and flight controls, explaining why all systems went...
...fiercely opposes P.L.O. chairman Yasser Arafat's decision to recognize Israel's right to exist and open talks with the U.S., were arrested by West German authorities in October. Seized with them was a cache of arms that included the ultimate boom box: a portable radio packed with a plastic explosive so cleverly concealed that the radio still worked. The wire detonator was fashioned to look under X rays like the radio's antenna. Israelis say the group had planned to blow up an Iberia Airlines flight carrying tourists to Israel...
...would be a message to the U.S. and a slap in the face for Yasser Arafat," said Ian Geldard, director of research at London's Institute for the Study of Terrorism. Allied with Libya, Abu Nidal would presumably have access to Muammar Gaddafi's ample supply of Semtex, a plastic explosive made in Czechoslovakia...
...things so deadly have ever looked so innocent. They have the appearance and consistency of soft taffy and can be molded, stretched or cut into any shape. They burn so safely that American G.I.s in Viet Nam used them as emergency cooking fuel. Yet plastic explosives pack roughly twice the force of an equivalent amount of dynamite. Many nations, including the U.S., produce them for military purposes. But large amounts have made their way into the hands of terrorist groups around the world, posing a fiendishly difficult problem for airline security. Because the explosives can be so easily formed into...