Coll 30/52(1) 'Persian Gulf. Diaries: Bahrain News and Intelligence Reports' [‎12r] (25/1077)

2
116. Movements.,of Bahrain Government Off icials
(i) Reference paragraph 103(i) of -v Intelligence
N<X«. IP Of 1940.
Or. R.H.B, Snov; returned Indy’s cn the 15tn
October 1940. • .
(ii) Mr.C.R.L. Adrian-Vallance, Director of Education
Bahrain Government., ncturned on the 18th October 1940
from Kuwait where he h&G bopn on e tour of inspection.
117 Local Affairs
The oil refinery of the Bahrain Petroleum Com
pany was bombed on the 19th October 1940. At about
3.15 a.m. two or possibly three machines approached
Bahrain from a westerly direction and after circling
over the refinery at a height between two and three
thousand feet dropped salvos of bombs, a number of which
failed to explode. Some 84 homos were dropped, all of
them of small calibre. They fell very wide of the
target and there were no casualties and no damage was
done.
Bombs were dropped on the Oil Field of the Cali
fornia Arabian Standard Oil Company at Bharan, Saudi
Arabia, the same morning, probably by the same enemy
aircraft. There were no casualties, but slight damage
was done to an oil and a water pipeline.
The possibility of an air attack having been
considered to be extremely remote, the defence of the
Oil Refinery against saboteurs depended largely on the
illumination of the perimeter with powerful lights.
These could not be switched off before the first salvo
of bombs had been dropped. The target must have been
of the type longed for by pilots of bombing aircraft -
perfectly defined, brilliantly illuminated, and without
defence* Why the refinery was not hit is beyond com
prehension.
318, Loca l Opinion
It was at first thought by the Arab population
that the raid in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia was ”staged ,r
by the British with a view to inciting Arab opinion
against the Italians, creating complications between
the Saudi Government and the Italians and further
rousing the Americans. But disillusionment followed
when the Italian and German broadcasts made their usual
exaggerated claims of damage done in Bahrain.
The facts that the attack was made during the
month of Ramadhan and that no hits were scored on so
obvious a target which was without any form of protec
tion against aircraft, have caused contempt for the
Italians to greatly increase.
!L9. Trucial Coast A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates. Affairs
On his recent visit to King Ibn Saud, Shaikh
Said bin Maktum, Ruler of Dubai, seems to have been
very much impressed by the King* s attitude towards His
Majesty’s Government. Speaking about the v/ar in general
Ibn Saud /■