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An Iraqi born in the UK was sentenced to at least 32 years in jail for carrying out the attempted car bomb attack on Glasgow airport in 2007. But this demonstration of a copy of the bomb used, built by explosives expert Dr. Sidney Alford for the BBC, shows how little the Glasgow bombers knew about their craft.
Although the device did produce a "flamethrower-like effect" extending a few feet, there was no blast worth mentioning. Like the car bombs found in London in 2007, this used gas cylinders, apparently in a half-baked attempt at creating some sort of fuel-air explosive.
This is a difficult design to get right. The IRA were working on one in Colombia in 2001. But they were vastly more skilled and experienced at bomb-making. IRA car bombs were packed with over a thousand pounds of explosives — they were the first to use the Ammonium Nitrate/Fuel Oil (ANFO) car bomb — and incredibly destructive. The Glasgow attack killed nobody.
Dr. Alford’s verdict on the Glasgow car bomb is the same as IRA historian Andy Oppenheimer’s: "amateurish."
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