La Guardia Airport Bombing

On December 29, 1975, a bomb exploded at New York City's La Guardia Airport, killing 11 and injuring more than 75. The crime, considered to be one of the most lethal bombings of its time as well as one of the first major terrorist attacks on an airport, remains unsolved more than 25 years later.

The bomb detonated at 6:30 P.M. on a busy, postholiday Monday night, shattering the 30-foot-tall plate glass windows of the lower-level baggage claim area shared by TWA and Delta. The explosion blew a 10-by-15-foot hole through the eight-inch-thick reinforced concrete ceiling and also damaged the ceiling on the floor above. The terminal's luggage carousels and huge metal doors lay mangled.

The blast touched off a two-alarm fire and triggered the airport sprinkler system. Firefighters, who battled rush-hour traffic, suppressed the fire within an hour. The damage (estimated at $750,000) included burned walls and injuries from shards of glass that had rained over an area longer than a football field; in addition, pieces of a nearby bank of 12 metal storage lockers flew, like shrapnel, over hundreds of feet.

The bombing had come without warning; however, at approximately 7:30 P.M., an anonymous caller claimed that another bomb was in the American Airlines baggage claim area, adding to the chaos. This claim, like the many others that plagued airports and bus terminals nationwide in the days following, proved to be false.

By New Year's Eve, investigators had reconstructed most of the explosion. The bomb had been placed in one of the twelve 24-hour parcel lockers located between two luggage carousels, and had not come in on an inbound flight. The reconstructed bank of lockers, painstakingly pieced together from bits of metal found in the debris, revealed facts about the bomb, but little about who placed it. Initial guesses had put the power of the explosion at 15 sticks of dynamite. Later estimates rose to 25 sticks—approximately 12.5 pounds of explosives. This was one-anda-half times the amount of explosives used in the Fraunces Tavern bombing in January 1975, which had claimed four lives.

Many believed that the Puerto Rican independence group that claimed responsibility for the Fraunces Tavern bombing, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN), was also responsible for the La Guardia bomb. However, neither the FALN nor any other prominent terrorist group came forward to claim responsibility for the bombing. In fact, the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was mentioned early on in Associated Press and UPI news reports, emphatically denied involvement and denounced the attack. In May 1976, a Cuban American charged with six other bombings in Miami, Florida, was sought in connection with the case, but was not charged. Today, Croatian nationalists are believed to have been the perpetrators, though no one has ever been brought to justice.