Bombed by the CIA
On 28 April 1958, Daronia was in Balikpapan Harbour, in the East Kalimantan Province of Borneo, when a Douglas B-26 Invader bomber aircraft, flown by the CIA and painted black with no markings, attacked the Shell oil terminal there. The Invader first bombed a larger tanker, Eagle Oil and Shipping's SS San Flaviano, setting her on fire and sinking her, and then attacked Daronia.[5][6]
Daronia and her sister ships had unusually high ventilators for their mid-ship pump rooms.[7] The B-26 dropped a 500-pound (227-kg) bomb that hit her port ventilator. However, instead of exploding, it bounced off toward her starboard ventilator and then fell harmlessly into the sea.[7] Daronia had a full load of petrol,[7] so if the bomb had detonated, the effects would almost certainly have been catastrophic.
As a consequence, Daronia left Balikpapan that same day for the safety of Singapore, taking with her 26 of San Flaviano's rescued crew.[8] A further 24 crew from San Flaviano followed a few days later on another Anglo-Saxon tanker, MV Dromus (1938).[8] Shell also evacuated shore-based families to Singapore and suspended its tanker service to Balikpapan.[5]
In June 1958, both the Indonesian and UK governments claimed that the aircraft had been flown by Indonesian rebels.[5] In reality, only the radio operator was from the Permesta rebels in North Sulawesi. The B-26, its bombs, and its pilot, former USAAF officer William H. Beale, were sent by the CIA as part of a US covert operation supporting the rebellion. The CIA pilots had orders to target foreign merchant ships to discourage trade in Indonesian waters, thereby weakening the Indonesian economy and destabilizing President Sukarno's government. Shell's suspension of operations and partial evacuation of personnel was precisely the intended outcome of the CIA attack.
For some months prior, UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd had supported US policy to supply Permesta. On 6 May 1958, more than a week after the CIA sank San Flaviano and hit Daronia, Lloyd secretly informed US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that he maintained his support for this policy. On 18 May, Indonesian forces shot down another Permesta B-26 and captured its CIA pilot, Allen Pope. Nevertheless, in June 1958 both Indonesia and the UK publicly continued to claim that the aircraft had been flown by Indonesian rebels,[5] concealing the CIA involvement of which both governments were fully aware.
