In 1944 Daronia survived being hit by two German torpedoes, and in 1958 she survived being hit by a bomb in an air raid by the CIA. Shell withdrew Daronia from service in 1960 and she was scrapped in November of that year.
Building
Hawthorn, Leslie & Co built Daronia at its Hebburn yard on the River Tyne in North East England as yard number 617. She was launched on 19 December 1938 and completed in February 1939.[1][2] Her registered length was 465.3 ft (141.8 m), her beam was 59.3 ft (18.1 m) and her depth was 33.8 ft (10.3 m). Her tonnages were 8,139 GRT, 4,784 NRT and 12,000 DWT.[3]
On 18 August 1944 Daronia left Durban, South Africa, in ballast and with a deck cargo of empty oil drums and general cargo. She was part of Convoy DN-68, sailing northwards in the Indian Ocean for dispersal further up the coast of East Africa.[4]
Daronia and her sister ships had unusually high ventilators for their mid-ship pump rooms.[9] The B-26 dropped a 500-pound (227-kg) bomb that hit her port ventilator, but instead of exploding it bounced off towards her starboard ventilator and then fell harmlessly into the sea.[9]Daronia had a full load of petrol,[9] so if the bomb had detonated the effects would almost certainly have been devastating.
As a consequence Daronia left Balikpapan that same day for the safety of Singapore, taking with her 26 of San Flaviano's rescued crew.[10] A further 24 crew from San Flaviano followed a few days later on another Anglo-Saxon tanker, Dromus.[10] Shell also evacuated shore-based wives and families to Singapore and suspended its tanker service to Balikpapan.[7]
In June 1958 both the Indonesian and UK governments claimed that the aircraft had been flown by Indonesian rebels.[7] In fact only the radio operator was from the Permesta rebels in North Sulawesi.[11] The B-26, its bombs and its pilot, former USAAF officer William H. Beale, were sent by the CIA as part of US covert support for the rebellion.[11] The CIA pilots had orders to target foreign merchant ships to drive foreign trade away from Indonesian waters, thereby weakening the Indonesian economy and destabilising the Indonesian government of President Sukarno.[6] Shell's suspension of operations and partial evacuation of personnel was exactly what the CIA attack was intended to achieve.
For some months previously, UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd had supported US policy to supply Permesta.[12] On 6 May 1958, more than a week after the CIA sank San Flaviano and hit Daronia, Lloyd secretly told US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that this was still his position.[13] On 18 May, Indonesian forces shot down a different Permesta B-26 and captured its CIA pilot, Allen Pope.[14][15] Nevertheless, in June 1958 both Indonesia and the UK publicly claimed that the aircraft had been flown by Indonesian rebels,[7] concealing the CIA involvement of which both governments were well aware.
Withdrawal and scrapping
Daronia remained in Shell service until 1960. In November of that year she was scrapped in Hong Kong.
References
^ ab"Daronia". Tyne Built Ships. Shipping and Shipbuilding Research Trust. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
^Helder, Kees. "Daronia". HelderLine. Kees Helder. Retrieved 24 January 2022.
Conboy, Kenneth; Morrison, James (1999). Feet to the Fire CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957–1958. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN1-55750-193-9.