San Flaviano affair

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The San Flaviano affair was a military-diplomatic incident during the Permesta uprising against the Sukarno government in Indonesia in 1957/58, in which a British tanker was bombed and sunk by a CIA pilot as part of a false flag operation.

The tanker San Flaviano

The San Flaviano was a British tanker owned by the Eagle Oil and Shipping Company and operated by the Royal Dutch Shell under the flag of the Bahamas . The ship was named after the patron saint Flavianus of Constantinople .

Technical specifications:

  • Builder: Cammell Laird, Birkenhead , England
  • Build number: 1242
  • Launched in 1956
  • Size: 19,349 t
  • Length: 169 m
  • Width: 21 m
  • Machine: steam turbine
  • Speed: 14 kn
  • Crew: 53

The sinking

Douglas A-26 Invader (19453591704)

To support the Permesta rebels, the CIA had set up the AUREV ( Angkatan Udara Revolusioner ) in early 1958 ; a small air force , consisting of 15 B-26 - bombers and some P-51 -Mustang- fighter aircraft was used by CIA agents and mercenaries from Nationalist China ( Taiwan ), Poland , the Philippines and the United States were manned. On April 28, 1958, the San Flaviano was in the port of Balikpapan on the east side of Borneo . She had just unloaded her cargo of Kuwaiti crude when she and a second British tanker were bombed by a B-26 that was painted black and had no national emblems . Due to the unloading that had just taken place, the tanker's bunkers were still filled with highly flammable gas . Although the explosions of one or more 500 lb (230 kg) bombs quickly spread a fire over the ship and had already destroyed or rendered the lifeboats on the starboard side unusable, the crew of around 50 succeeded to clear both lifeboats on the port side and to evacuate the ship. The San Flaviano ran aground at the entrance of the port and burned out completely. According to a message from the Hamburger Abendblatt , the tanker was considered a total loss.

In addition to the San Flaviano , the Shell tanker Daronia , which is also in port, was attacked. The ship was hit by a bomb, but it did not explode. In contrast to the San Flaviano , the Daronia was still loaded with crude oil. An explosion of the bomb would probably have triggered a catastrophe that would also have affected the port facilities. The Daronia took part of the crew of the San Flaviano on board and transported them to Singapore . Due to the bombing of their two tankers, Shell stopped delivering oil to the port.

In June 1958, both the Indonesian and British governments claimed that Indonesian Permesta rebels piloted the attack. In fact, the pilot of the aircraft was a former officer of the USAAF , William Beale . The bombing was part of a CIA intelligence operation aimed at destabilizing the Indonesian government of Sukarno. The bombing of neutral merchant ships by the alleged insurgents was intended to deter neutrals from Indonesian waters and thereby weaken the country's economy.

Since the British government supported the foreign policy course of the NATO partner USA towards Indonesia, the bombing of the San Flaviano by the CIA was concealed, although on May 17, 1958 the British submarine HMS Aurochs (P426) by an airplane in the Molucca Sea the mercenary force had been shot at.

Allen priest

On May 18, 1958, the Indonesian armed forces under the command of General Abdul Haris Nasution shot down an attacking B-26, capturing CIA pilot Allen Lawrence Pope . Even so, both Indonesia and Great Britain continued to deny US involvement. Pope was sentenced to death for the murder of Indonesian soldiers , but was released to the USA in 1961. He later worked for Southern Air Transport (SAT) in Miami , which, like Air America, was a front-line organization of the CIA, which was also used in the Contra War in Nicaragua in the 1980s .

Beale, who had flown the attack on the San Flaviano , died on April 6, 1962 while working for Air America in the Lao Civil War , when his overloaded aircraft did not take off and crashed along with the entire crew. There were no survivors.

See also

literature

  • Kenneth Conboy / James Morrison: Feet to fire. CIA covers operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958 , Annapolis, MD (Naval Institute Press) 1999. ISBN 1557501939
  • Audrey R. Kahin / George McTurnan Kahin : Subversion as Foreign Policy. The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia , Seattle / London (University of Washington Press) 1997. ISBN 0-295-97618-7
  • Abdul Haris Nasution : The Guerrilla War. Basics of guerrilla warfare from the perspective of the Indonesian defense system in the past and future , Cologne 1961.
  • William Blum : Killing hope. Destruction of hope. Global operations of the CIA since World War II , 3rd edition Frankfurt a. M. (Zambon) 2015. ISBN 978-3-88975-141-6

Web links