The Special Air Service: The History of the Secret British

Special Forces Unit from World War II to Today

By Charles River Editors

An SAS patrol in North Africa during World War II

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 Introduction

A 1950s picture of an SAS parachutist in Denmark

The Special Air Service
“The passive resistance to war, in which we have acquitted ourselves so
well, must come to an end.” – Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Europe’s attempts to appease Adolf Hitler, most notably at Munich in
1938, failed, as Nazi Germany swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia
by 1939. Italy was on the march as well, invading Albania in April of 1939.
The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was Germany's invasion of
Poland on September 1 of that year. Two days later, France and Great
Britain declared war on Germany, and World War II had begun in earnest.
Of course, as most people now know, the invasion of Poland was merely
the preface to the Nazi blitzkrieg of most of Western Europe, which would
include Denmark, Belgium, and France by the summer of 1940. The
resistance put up by these countries is often portrayed as weak, and the
narrative is that the British stood alone in 1940 against the Nazi onslaught,
defending the British Isles during the Battle of Britain and preventing a
potential German invasion.
At the beginning of 1941, it was unclear whether the Allies would be able
to remain in the war for much longer. British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill had already immortalized the men of the Royal Air Force with
one of the West’s most famous war-time quotes, but the potential of a
German invasion of Britain still loomed. With the comfort of hindsight,
historians now suggest that the picture was actually more complex than
that, but the Battle of Britain, fought throughout the summer and early
autumn of 1940, was unquestionably epic in scope. The largest air
campaign in history at the time, the vaunted Nazi Luftwaffe sought to
smash the Royal Air Force, but thankfully, the RAF stood toe to toe with
the Luftwaffe and ensured Hitler’s planned invasion was permanently put
on hold. The Allied victory in the Battle of Britain inflicted a psychological
and physical defeat on the Luftwaffe and Nazi regime at large, and as the
last standing bastion of democracy in Europe, Britain would provide the
toehold for the June 1944 invasion of Europe that liberated the continent.
For those reasons alone, the Battle of Britain was one of the decisive
turning points of history’s deadliest conflict.
Of course, that was all in the future, and things still looked bleak in 1941.
Traditionally, defeated armies resorted to guerrilla warfare, at least those
unwilling to acknowledge defeat, but the British were certainly not prepared
to do that just yet. What the situation produced was one of the most storied
covert special forces units in military history, one that influenced several
other Western nations. The Special Air Service: The History of the Secret
British Special Forces Unit from World War II to Today chronicles the
major events and the hidden history of the SAS. Along with pictures of
important people, places, and events, you will learn about the British SAS
like never before.
The Special Air Service: The History of the Secret British Special Forces
Unit from World War II to Today
About Charles River Editors
Introduction
The Origins of the SAS
North Africa
Special Air Service
Malaya
C Squadron (Rhodesia) SAS
The SAS After Malaya
Northern Ireland
Operation Nimrod
The Falklands
The Gulf War
Online Resources
Bibliography
Free Books by Charles River Editors
Discounted Books by Charles River Editors
 The Origins of the SAS
The spring of 1940 was a moment of awakening for the British. Between
May and June of that year, upwards of 330,000 Allies troops of the British
Expeditionary Force were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk, as
German forces stormed through Europe, taking France, and forcing Britain
out of Europe. These events, as tragic and difficult as they were, were a
vindication of Winston Churchill, and the other “jitterbugs” who had
warned consistently that German belligerence need to be taken seriously. A
military establishment, still wedded to grapeshot and horseflesh, needed to
rapidly embrace advances in military thinking already clearly adopted in
Germany.
However, having swallowed the unpalatable facts of Dunkirk, and with
the Germans firmly established in occupied Europe, the question then
became what to do as military resources and forces were being built up for
a reinvasion of Europe. After the conclusion of the Battle of Britain, and the
failure of the German Luftwaffe to pave the way for an invasion of Britain,
the only theater of war active was North Africa. This would not develop
into a major conflict, however, until the Italian invasion of Egypt that would
commence on September 9, 1940. It would be this campaign that would set
the ball rolling in North Africa, commencing a war of massive maneuver,
and the first major British entry into mobile tank warfare.
Traditionally, defeated armies resorted to guerrilla warfare, at least those
unwilling to acknowledge defeat, but the British were certainly not prepared
to do that just yet. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the prime
minister with the most accrued power of any British leader before or since,
and also head of the Defense Ministry, was particularly keen on an
aggressive response - he wished to take the war to the enemy. A now
frequently quoted memo exchanged between him and Head of the Military
Wing of the War Cabinet, Lord Ismay, offers a clear insight into what he
was thinking: “What arrangements are being made for good agents in
Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and along the French coast? Enterprises must
be prepared, with specially trained troops of the hunter class, who can
develop a reign of terror down these coasts, first of all on the ‘butcher and
bolt’ policy; but later on, or perhaps as soon as we are organized, we could
surprise Calais Boulogne, kill and perhaps capture the Hun garrison, and
hold the place until all the preparations to reduce it by siege or heavy storm
have been made, and then away.”

Churchill
 Lord Ismay
This was radical thinking for the times. Just over 20 years earlier, the
curtain had fallen on what was at the time the biggest war in history, when
minds frozen in past wars decimated a generation for lack of adaptive
strategy. Churchill, of course, was not without blood on his own hands -
Gallipoli, after all, was his brainchild - but he also could recall an earlier
experience when the rules of warfare had been challenged in precisely the
way he was proposing now. Between 1899 and 1902, British forces were
engaged in the first major conflict of the 20th century, the Boer War, and in
standard British fashion, the blunt instrument of massive, overwhelming
force quickly defeated the Boer on the conventional battlefield. However,
when the Boer utilized traditional methods of guerrilla warfare developed
during the long native wars, the British were, for a long time, powerless to
respond.
Churchill saw action in South Africa only as a journalist, but he
nonetheless absorbed the lessons of the war, even if the British senior
command did not. Churchill, moreover, was not the only one reflecting on
those lessons. Sir John Dill, Chief of Imperial General Staff, had as his
military assistant Lieutenant-Colonel Dudley Clarke, who was born in
Johannesburg at the outbreak of the Boer War. He was too young to
remember the events of the war, but his father participated in the infamous
Jameson Raid. He inevitably grew up listening to tales about Boer
commandos, and the exploits of a handful of daring men who took on the
might of the British by utilizing all of the essential strategies of irregular
warfare that would only formalize much later in the 20th century. It was
Lieutenant-Colonel Clarke who first proposed the idea of a small, specially
trained force configured to stage hit-and-run operations, using the single
major asset that the British did have, which was sea power. These ideas he
presented to Sir John Dill, who in turn placed them on Churchill’s desk.

A 1945 portrait of Clarke

At the moment Churchill finished reading the memo, a rubber stamp fell
upon it, and the game was on. Three days later, Lieutenant-Colonel Clarke
found himself in charge of the project at Section M09 at the War Office.
 From the onset, Clarke enjoyed the full support of the prime minister,
which was in itself almost unprecedented in British ministerial history, and
which lent enormous impetus to the project. The project was placed under a
Combined Operations command, initially headed by Admiral Sir Roger
Keyes, later by Lord Louis Mountbatten, and then by Major General Robert
Laycock.

Keyes
Lord Mountbatten
 Laycock
This was the beginning of the tradition of military commandos, the name
derived from that Boer template. Of course, by then, the raiding mobility of
irregular mounted infantry had run its course, and the modern commando
would require fluency in air, sea and land. Guerrillas in the orthodox sense
of the word are irregulars, but men of the new commando units were
regular soldiers selected from volunteers drawn from the regular army and
subject to training that, although unorthodox, was nonetheless of a
professional military caliber. Their qualifications as guerrillas were that
they were professional soldiers fighting la petit guerre, or Kleinkrieg,
implying simply a “Little War,” as a definitive strategy within the scope of
a much wider conflict.
Guerrilla war is also sometimes referred to as asymmetric warfare, which
in turn implies an imbalance in the resources of two opposing forces.
Typically, throughout modern history, this has taken the form, as in South
Africa, of a large, occupying conventional force, disproportionately larger
than its enemy and thus lacking tactical agility. This presents the
opportunity for a much smaller force, ideally enjoying the sympathy of a
subject population, to utilize unorthodox tactics to harass and weaken the
larger force until it is compelled to the negotiating table.
In the case of commando units, this asymmetry is applied in almost the
same way, but it is less a political than a military tool, preparing the way or
aiding the progress of a much larger conventional army. In the case of
Britain in 1940, it was a means of using limited resources to distract a far
greater number of enemy forces, all in order to prepare the way for a much
larger invasion.
North Africa
“The name SAS came mainly from the fact I was anxious to get the full
co-operation of a very ingenious individual called Dudley Clark[e], who
was responsible for running a deception operation in Cairo. Clark[e] was
quite an influential chap and promised to give me all the help he could if I
would use the name of his bogus brigade of parachutists, which is the
Special Air Service, the SAS.” – David Stirling
 The exploits of the various British commando units that grew rapidly
from the exigencies of war are now the stuff of legend, but the start was
awfully quiet, and instead of being in Europe, the special operations began
in North Africa.
At the outbreak of war, Hitler did not initially place great importance on
North Africa as a strategic objective. The Italians were in Libya, Ethiopia,
and Somalia, and bearing in mind the depleted state of the British garrison
in Egypt, there seemed no reason to believe that a large and well-armed
Italian force in Libya could not at least defend itself, or even to advance in
pursuit of Mussolini’s main objectives, particularly the seizure of the Suez
Canal. The Italians launched their invasion of Egypt on September 9, 1940
under the command of a pedigreed Italian officer by the name of Marshall
Rodolfo Graziani. Initially, the invasion went well, and British forces were
rolled back some 65 miles into Egypt, but then the Italians paused and dug
in, and an unexpected stalemate ensued. The rationale for this was that the
Italians needed to build up additional forces and supplies for a further push
into Egypt.
At the head of the British Middle East Command was one of the great
commanders of the war, General Archibald Wavell, and in response to the
Italian threat, he launched Operation Compass. In brief, Operation Compass
was the first major Allied operation in North Africa, which, between
December 9, 1940 and February 9, 1941, rolled back the Italian advance to
the Gulf of Sirte, threatening Tripoli. History has tended to portray this as
an utterly putrid performance by the Italians, and the result of it was that
Hitler was forced to divert forces desperately needed in Eastern Europe to
North Africa. By doing so, he introduced the Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel, to
the field of operations that would make him a legend.
Rommel moved quickly, and at the head of the Afrika Korps, he drove
Allied forces back into Egypt, besieging the port of Tobruk but finding
himself soon at the end of a long supply line. He fell back once again,
leaving a garrison force to secure Sollum and the tactically important
Halfaya Pass, just on the Egyptian side of the frontier.
Wavell has perhaps not been universally recognized for the contribution
he made to the North African theater, and his war record is still debated
today, but what Wavell left behind him when he was replaced was one of
the signature special operations units in the history of modern warfare, the
Long Range Desert Group. Wavell recognized immediately when the idea
was presented by the founder the unit, Major Ralph Bagnold, the value of
long-range, mobile reconnaissance, and he immediately authorized the
formation of the group. The LRDG quickly proved its value, not only as a
reconnaissance resource across the vast desert reaches, but also as a hit-and-
run raiding force able to stage highly mobile surprise attacks against Italian
and German targets scattered across the western deserts of Libya.

Wavell
As a result, the LRDG set a precedent, so when Wavell was replaced at
the head of Middle East Command in July 1941, his successor, General
Claude Auchinleck, immediately began planning a major operation, to be
codenamed Operation Crusader. This operation intended to deal with the
Afrika Korps, then besieging Tobruk and dug in along the Libyan frontier.
 This was the situation that confronted Auchinleck as he succeeded the
outgoing Wavell. Plans for a counterattack were immediately begun, under
the codename Operation Crusader. Before his departure, however, Wavell
had also established another program that would soon dovetail into
planning for the formation of the SAS. Having established the necessary
structure for Combined Operations and the first commando units,
Lieutenant-Colonel Clarke was summoned to Cairo by Wavell in order to
establish what was described as “a special section of intelligence for
deception.” Clarke arrived in Cairo on December 18, 1940, where he was
immediately and secretly put in charge of a broad strategic deception
operation in North Africa. This was naturally a multifaceted assignment,
but for the most part it comprised operational deceptions along the lines of
false invasion plans, bogus leaked landing sites, and non-existent units. One
such example was Operation Abeam, which fabricated the existence of a
British paratrooper regiment in North Africa. Clarke also created the
entirely fictional 1st Special Service Brigade, which in turn was part of the
fictional 4th Airborne Division, used until the end of the war to mislead
Axis commanders into overestimating the strength of enemy forces in North
Africa.

Auchinleck
 Auchinleck, in the meantime, had very little time to practically plan for
Operation Crusader, and he was extremely busy in his office at command
headquarters in Cairo when into his office one day was shown a 24-year old
lieutenant, lately of No. 8 Commando, by the name of David Stirling. Much
the same way his predecessor, Wavell, had taken time to listen to the
eccentric ideas of Major Ralph Bagnold, giving rise to the Long Range
Desert Group, so Auchinleck, although irritated at the disruption, listened to
what the young man had to say. After a half an hour or so, and with very
little ceremony, Auchinleck granted Lieutenant Stirling permission to go
ahead and form the special operations. He abruptly returned his attention to
his desk, and the meeting was over.

Stirling
Stirling’s next stop was Clarke’s office. Clarke obviously was one of the
first to hear of plans afoot to establish a small force of parachute-trained
soldiers to operate behind enemy lines, aiming to gain intelligence, destroy
enemy aircraft, and attack their supply and reinforcement routes. He offered
his assistance in forming the unit, which was exactly what Stirling needed,
but the offer was contingent on one condition: the new unit must be named
“Special Air Service Brigade,” in order to lend credibility to the bogus
structure that Clarke was busy constructing. Stirling agreed, and the new
unit acquired the name “L” Detachment, Special Air Service.
Special Air Service
“The more mechanical becomes the weapons with which we fight, the
less mechanical must be the spirit that controls them.” – General Archibald
Wavell
Few names resonate quite so strongly through the halls of British military
distinction than that of David Stirling. When war broke out in September
1939, Stirling was on a climbing tour of North America, but he quickly
hurried home to join his regiment. As a reserve officer in the Scots Guards,
he was described as indifferent and somewhat irresponsible, but he was
nonetheless welcomed back into uniform as the Scots Guard 5th Battalion
Expeditionary Force was preparing for deployment to Finland.
When that operation was cancelled and the battalion was disbanded,
Stirling needed a new positioned. In June 1940, therefore, Stirling
volunteered for the newly formed No. 8 Commando under the command of
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Laycock, the future head of Combined
Operations. No. 8 Commando was deployed to North Africa early in 1941,
right around the time the Afrika Korps was arriving in North Africa to
support the retreating Italian army. By August 1, however, the group known
as “Layforce” was disbanded, leaving a frustrated Lieutenant Stirling,
injured in a parachute accident, wondering what to do next.
Initially, 5 officers and 60 other ranks were selected for training
undertaken at Kabrit Air Base, located east of Cairo and just south of the
Great Bitter Lake. This training was rather ad hoc, and it did not improve a
great deal on standard commando training, but a greater emphasis was
placed on air deployment and small unit operation. Like the Long Range
Desert Group, already in operation, much training would be undertaken on
the job. Frankly, as the requirements of the job were better understood,
techniques were devised and developed to cope with them.
The first operation was codenamed Operation Squatter, a parachute
operation that was highly experimental and ultimately a disaster. The
Germans at that point held almost complete air superiority over the
battlefield, and attempting to narrow the gap by hitting Axis airfields was
the first operational objective.
From the onset, Operation Squatter, launched in support of Operation
Crusader, was ill-fated. It was launched into a strong gale and heavy rain,
and one of the aircraft was shot down, killing all 15 men and crew aboard.
Not a single Axis aircraft was harmed, and of the 65 SAS men who took
part, which comprised the entire force at that time, only 22 returned.[1]
This was by any standard a disaster, and Stirling was extremely fortunate
to be granted a second opportunity. He recruited a second batch of men
from the disbanding “Layforce” commandos and started from scratch.
Determined to avoid repeating the same mistake, the L Detachment force
earmarked for the next operation would be inserted overland.
Operation Green Room was launched in December 1941, during the
closing phases of Operation Crusader, and this time the expertise of the
Long Range Desert Group helped. The SAS teams were successfully
inserted, hitting three airfields in Libya and destroying 60 aircraft without
loss. Given the previously disastrous Operation Squatter, this was precisely
the sort of vindicating result that Stirling needed. Thereafter, L Detachment
was in the driver’s seat of special operations all across the North African
theater. In the process, a unique partnership developed between L
Detachment and the Long Range Desert Group, with the latter providing the
specialist navigation and long-range transport abilities to get L Detachment
units in and out.
In June 1942, L Detachment took part in a wider combined operation
utilizing several British commando units, attacking Axis airfields on the
occupied island of Crete. This operation, codenamed Albumen, was costly
in casualties but extremely successful, proving the versatility of the
fledgling SAS. The following month, Stirling personally commanded
another daring overland raid on Axis airfields at Fuka and Mersa Matruh,
destroying a total of 30 aircraft.
Perhaps the most famous L Detachment operation of the Desert Campaign
was Operation Bigamy, for all the wrong reasons. Operation Bigamy
proposed hitting the Axis port of Benghazi in support of a much larger
operation, Operation Agreement, underway on September 13-14, 1942. The
objective was to destroy harbor and storage facilities, and, in combination
with the RAF, knock out the key Axis airfield of Benina, a few miles east of
Benghazi.
Access, again in cooperation with the Long Range Desert Group,
involved a lengthy, diversionary journey across the Great Sand Sea of
central Libya before approaching the target area from the south. The attack
force was relatively large, comprising a substantial vehicle convoy, but as it
approached the target area, it was spotted and shadowed by an Italian
reconnaissance force. Stirling decided to abandon the mission and return
inland to a remote base located at Kufra, some 600 miles into the desert.
The convoy, however, was picked up by a Luftwaffe patrol, and some 70
vehicles were destroyed on the ground by air-to-ground fire. Casualties
were heavy, but given the government’s confidentiality, the specifics are
still hard to establish. Nonetheless, it proved to be something like a rite of
passage for the young unit, the survivors of which, in September 1942, were
rebadged the 1st SAS Regiment. The group was then organized into
squadrons – four British, one Free French, one Greek and a Special Boat
Section.
 Members of the Free French Squadron
By the beginning of 1943, North African operations were beginning to
wind down. Axis forces were pressed from both sides as the Allied 8th
Army advanced westward through Libya and the American led
expeditionary force of Operation Torch closed in on Tunisia through
Algeria. David Stirling, known then as the Phantom Major, was captured by
a special anti-SAS team set up by the Germans, and for the remainder of the
war he was held as a prisoner of war. After numerous escapes, he was
eventually held in the notorious castle at Colditz.
On the ground, he was replaced as commander of 1 SAS by Lieutenant
Colonel Paddy Mayne, and the unit was temporarily rebadged the Special
Raiding Squadron. By then a 2 SAS had been formed, under the command
of David Stirling’s older brother, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Stirling.
 Mayne
By early February 1943, the war in North Africa was effectively over, and
the Allies’ attention shifted to Sicily and the Italian mainland. There, the 2
SAS was engaged in fairly orthodox commando operations in support of the
Allied landings. Numerous similar raiding and commando operations
followed, and by the end of 1943, with the Allies some two-thirds of the
way up the boot of Italy, the Special Raiding Squadron reverted to its
original badge of the 1 SAS. Alongside the 2 SAS, it was withdrawn from
Italy and returned to Britain, and there placed under the command of the 1st
Airborne Division, an airborne infantry division of the British Army.
In March 1944, the 1 and 2 SAS Regiments joined a newly formed SAS
Brigade of the Army Air Corps, and they were reconfigured into the 1, 2, 3,
and 4 SAS, operating alongside more orthodox British airborne infantry.
For the remainder of the war, the various SAS units were involved in
numerous operations behind German lines in support of the Allied invasion
of Europe, operating frequently in cooperation with the French and Italian
resistance. By the time major operations in Europe were over in May 1945,
the SAS had suffered a recorded total of 330 casualties, but the SAS could
claim an extraordinary kill rate of some 7,733 enemy killed or wounded,
and over 23,000 captured. The various Belgian and French units of the SAS
were returned to their national command, and on October 8, 1945, the
British 1 and 2 SAS regiments were disbanded.
Malaya
“Control yourself and you control all.” – Brigadier “Mad Mike” Calvert

Calvert marching past an assembly of SAS members in 1945

From 1948-1960, British forces were involved in three major
counterinsurgency campaigns: Malaya (1948-1960); Kenya (1952-1960);
and Cyprus (1955-1959). Each of these represented a significant political,
economic, and military commitment, and for the greater part of the 1950s,
they were being fought concurrently. This was something of a coming of
age for the modern British armed forces, insofar as small wars would
thereafter tend to be a feature of the British military experience and require
a greater emphasis on methodologies of counterinsurgency warfare.
 While the British were not entirely without counterinsurgency experience,
new experiences emerged from Cyprus, Kenya, and Malaya, in particular
the latter two, that formed the basis of the future British counterinsurgency
manual.
After World War II, the surviving European colonial powers – the British,
French, and Portuguese – all to a greater or lesser extent experienced
demands for national independence, and these demands were often
accompanied by communist ideology and revolutionary guerrilla warfare.
The first major challenge of this sort for the British occurred in the Far
East. When the British High Commissioner for Malaya declared a state of
emergency in June 1948, it marked the culmination of several months of
political unrest and acts of terror committed by elements of the Malayan
Communist Party (MCP). During World War II, resistance to the Japanese
occupation of Malaya had been led mainly by the Communist Malayan
People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), which gained considerable support
from the local Chinese. Following the surrender of the Japanese in August
1945, the MCP attempted to seize power, but in the end, it was unable to
prevent the British from reasserting control.
The British moved quickly to disband the MPAJA, recognizing the MCP
as a legitimate political party. However, quantities of weapons were still in
circulation in secret jungles bases, and before long, a decision by the MCP
to launch an armed struggle created the conditions for an insurgency
campaign that began in earnest in 1948.
As a unity movement between the politically active Malayan Chinese and
the indigenous Malays, the Malayan Races Liberation Army was formed
under Chin Peng, a long-time Maoist revolutionary leader of the MCP.
Their fighters took to the jungle, and relying on support from urban and
rural squatter Chinese, their guerrilla groups were able to launch hit-and-run
strikes on police, local officials, mines, and plantations. Initially, these
groups enjoyed considerable success, utilizing surprise as well as the local
terrain. Jungle conditions favored the guerrillas, and they certainly favored
this emerging style of operations. About 80% of Malaya comprised
primaeval jungle, and the west and east coasts were divided by a 6,000 foot
mountain range. Local security forces, comprising mainly a police force of
some 10,000 men and a small force of British Gurkhas, were not really in a
position, in the aftermath of World War II, to deal with such a unique war,
and at the start they were at a complete loss.

A headline with a picture of Chin Peng

Initially (as would also occur in Kenya), sweeping emergency regulations
were introduced that empowered police and courts to enact a draconian civil
campaign. This saw the gallows deployed almost as a weapon of war.
Registration, passes, and severe restrictions on movement and association
all caused the government to be accused of totalitarianism, which was
certainly a fair opinion. A revised military and security strategy was
desperately needed, and that would be offered in 1950 when Lieutenant
General (retired) Sir Harold Briggs was appointed to “plan, coordinate and
direct anti-bandit operations of the police and fighting forces.” Within a
fortnight of his arrival in Malaya, Briggs issued his plan of operation, the
“Briggs Plan,” which set out four main aims: to dominate the populated
areas and generate a sense of complete security, which would in time
generate an increased flow of information and intelligence vital to the
conduct of a counterinsurgency war; to break up communist networks in
those populated areas; to isolate the insurgents from the sources of food,
supplies and support; and to destroy the insurgents by forcing them to attack
security forces on their own terms. This laid the groundwork for an entirely
new concept of warfare, utilizing a combined civil and military structure,
with Special Branch as the principal intelligence-gathering organ.[2] In order
to deny guerrillas access to support provided by Chinese squatters,
“protected” or “contained” villages were constructed so the populations
were concentrated and controlled. This was a policy later extended to
Kenya and Rhodesia, and perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of
the British counterinsurgency response in all three countries.
The issue now became one of how to configure a military force to
undertake the military aspect of these proposed combined operations.
Several special force units came into being as a consequence, one of which
was the Malayan Scouts, later known as the 22 SAS Regiment.

Members of 22 SAS in Malaya

The story of the Malayan Scouts began with General Sir John Harding,
commander-in-chief of Far East Land Forces, who began the search for
British officers experienced in jungle warfare. With these, he hoped to
begin establishing a deep penetration commando unit specific to
requirements in Malaya. One of the first to come forward was a veteran of
the World War II SAS and the Chindits, a similarly configured special
operations unit established for work in Burma during the Japanese
occupation. Major Michael “Mad Mike” Calvert volunteered to conduct a
six-month fact-finding mission in Malaya, the results of which were
delivered to General Sir Harold Biggs, and which then became the basis of
the Briggs Plan.

Harding
An earlier irregular unit, manned mainly by European settlers and known
as Ferret Force, operated on a strictly local level, using local knowledge
provided by British planters to hunt down guerrilla units in the jungle.
Ferret Force enjoyed some localized success, but it was limited, and they
were perhaps most useful in confirming the utility of small, long-range
penetration groups in a hunter/killer role. “For the next six months,” Calvert
recorded in his memoir, “I travelled extensively all over Malaya. I visited
ornate palaces and asked the views of wealthy sultans. I went to brothels
and picked up the gossip of the gutter. I had myself put in jail in disguise
and rubbed shoulders with captured Communists. I went on tours of the
jungle on my own and I joined anti-rebel patrols of British troops in the
jungle.”
By then, there were some 25,000 British troops in Malaya, but as Calvert
observed, they were mainly young, National Service infantry who were
unhappily deployed and trained to fight the last war. Apart from ground
coverage and garrison, therefore, they were of no real value.
After six months, Calvert submitted his report. Implicit was the
understanding that a majority of the forces already in the country were
unsuitable, and a new concept was necessary. Calvert suggested reforming
the SAS, disbanded after World War II, a suggestion that met general
agreement, and he was given the go-ahead to do so. The name chosen was
Malayan Scouts (Special Air Service Regiment). The Malayan Scouts, it
must be noted, differed from a British-based territorial (reserve) regiment,
21 SAS Regiment, which was raised in 1946 from the defunct Artists
Rifles. The Artists Rifles, it might be added, was a formation raised as a
volunteer regiment in 1859, formatted by artists and musicians and others
involved in creative work. It served in World War I and World War II, and
its institutions and structures were used afterwards to accommodate a new
SAS. The name 21 SAS derived from an interest in perpetuating 1 and 2
SAS, operational during World War II, by combining and reversing the
figures in the name.
Calvert experienced great difficulty in recruitment and organization, and
this he blamed on official foot-dragging and hostility on the part of
orthodox infantry officers. The first recruits were mainly volunteers, many
originating from the Ferret Force. ‘”Volunteers” sent from infantry
battalions were often less than actual volunteers, and they proved in the end
to be largely worthless. A second source of recruits, however, was M
Squadron of 21 SAS, formed for service as part of the Commonwealth’s
commitment to the war in Korea. Major Anthony Greville-Bell,
commanding M Squadron, was at the last minute diverted to Malaya, where
the squadron was re-designated B Squadron, Malayan Scouts.
The newcomers from Britain were initially taken aback by the laissez-
faire attitude among established members of the Malayan Scouts – badged
A Squadron. This, however, soon mellowed out, and such practices as
wearing beards, using weapons of personal preference, and haphazard
uniform choices all soon became part of the Malayan lore.
One of the most interesting permutations of the reformed SAS was the
formation of the C Squadron (Rhodesia) SAS, one of the most celebrated
offshoots of the parent regiment. In June 1950, the Korean War broke out,
and British troops were committed to a role alongside American troops in
the conduct of the war. M Squadron, 21 SAS, was recruited for this
purpose, and at the same time, the call went out in the British colony of
Southern Rhodesia for volunteers. The job of organizing this intake fell to a
24-year old, Sandhurst trained Rhodesian Army Lieutenant, a World War II
veteran named Peter Walls. Walls would end his military career as the
highest-ranking Rhodesian military officer, and supreme military
commander of Rhodesian Security Forces during the iconic Rhodesian War.
[3]
Another notable Rhodesian military personality was Ron Reid-Daley,
who would emerge in the 1970s as the founding commander of the Iconic
Rhodesian Selous Scouts pseudo reconnaissance regiment.
The Rhodesian detachment, comprising 100 men (the so-called “Happy
Hundred”), was also diverted from Korea to Malaya, rebadged C Squadron
SAS (Malayan Scouts), and sent into action. The Rhodesians arrived in
1952 and were in action for two years.
All of these forces developed a whole new array of tactics when it came
to deep penetration and reconnaissance, pioneered by Calvert and the
original men of A Squadron but refined during the conduct of operations.
The use of helicopters for supply and insertion, survival for long periods
deep behind enemy lines, and a “heart and minds” campaign to alienate the
local population from guerrilla cells were all part of this. Native scouts were
used, including Iban trackers from Borneo, and disguising white troops with
beards, unrecognizable uniforms, and general campaign filth all added to a
growing and conspicuous success rate. By the late 1950s, the communist
guerrilla operations in Malaya had been broken, and outside units began
gradually to disperse. In 1957, independence was granted to Malaya, and
although insecurity continued, the war was effectively over.
This, arguably, was the birth of modern counterinsurgency, but what is
perhaps most important is that, in 1952, it was acknowledged that a regular
SAS regiment was vital. The Malayan Scouts were renamed 22 SAS
Regiment, and thereafter added to the permanent British army list.
It is also interesting to note that no formal system of pseudo operations
was introduced. This was an innovation pioneered in Kenya during the Mau
Mau Uprising, and later to even greater effect in Rhodesia. Informally,
however, pseudo-ops were a strong feature of what emerged from Malaya,
and the Rhodesians would take that lesson home with them.
C Squadron (Rhodesia) SAS
“Who Dares Wins.” – SAS motto
C Squadron SAS (Malayan) was disbanded more or less with the return of
the contingent to Southern Rhodesia, after which, in a general revision of
military forces, 1 Rhodesia Light Infantry was formed alongside C
squadron SAS, both in late 1960. The former was intended to operate in an
infantry role, and then later in a special force capacity. The RLI would soon
become a commando unit, and C Squadron, now C Squadron (Rhodesia)
SAS, would assume, as usual, a deep penetration, air, sea and land service.
The SAS had its barracks in the Northern Rhodesian town of Ndola, and
by the end of 1962, it had recruited enough men to become operational.[4] In
1963, as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland broke up, C Squadron
moved its headquarters south to Southern Rhodesia, establishing itself
alongside the RLI at Cranborne Barracks, just outside the capital city of
Salisbury.
The breakup in 1963 of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
presaged the breakaway of Southern Rhodesia from the British Empire. As
decolonization was sweeping through Africa, southern Rhodesia demanded
independence under white minority rule, which the British, although
sympathetic, were not in a position to grant. In November 1965, the right-
wing, white nationalist government declared unilateral independence from
Britain, plunging the rebel colony into a political crisis.
The affiliation of C Squadron (Rhodesia) SAS with its parent regiment
thereafter became quite difficult, for the obvious reason that Britain did not
recognize Rhodesian independence and applied heavy sanctions, including
arms and fuel embargoes. Nonetheless, with generations of shared military
history, British forces did not necessarily follow the government’s lead in
isolating erstwhile comrades in arms, and informally at least, C Squadron
remained within the British SAS stable.
War in Rhodesia began almost as soon as independence was declared, and
the SAS was initially deployed to support Portuguese forces in
Mozambique, themselves battling a growing insurgency pushing south from
Tanzania. The Portuguese by then were suffering low morale, partly the
result of being engaged in two major wars in Angola and Mozambique. The
1975 fall of Portuguese rule in Mozambique was what plunged Rhodesia
into general war, with hostile borders on three sides and only South Africa
offering military and economic support. From 1976 onwards, Rhodesia
fought a bitter war of survival against two powerful liberation movements
operating from Zambia and Mozambique.
Militarily, the highly trained, but numerically limited Rhodesian Security
Forces were unable to contain the insurgency in the country, and the
principal tactics then became securing vital interests in the country and
hitting guerrilla bases and staging facilities outside the country. The SAS
and Rhodesian Light Infantry formed the main strike force for most of these
external operations, in combination with the Selous Scout, another much
admired Rhodesian special force. Many of these operations were built on
what was known as the Rhodesian “Fireforce,” based on a highly efficient
domestic intelligence network, and a rapid-response, vertical envelopment
mounted helicopter commandos and paratroopers. The success rate of all of
these operations was remarkable, with huge numbers of enemy killed, but
the ultimate trajectory of the war was not altered.
For South African Special Forces, Rhodesian combat was extremely
useful for its own training, and on many of these external operations, covert
South African involvement often made the difference between success and
failure. A secret component of the Rhodesian SAS, now badged 1
(Rhodesia) SAS, was D Squadron, made up of some 40 South African
Reconnaissance Commandos, or “Recces.” They operated in Rhodesia
under separate command, and from a separate base. Standards of selection
were extremely high, even during periods of severe manpower shortages,
but these high standards and the availability of combat in an extremely
specialized environment tended to attract numerous foreigners to the unit.
An informal club of Rhodesian soldiers from the United States was formed,
known as the Crippled Eagles.
The Rhodesian SAS also conducted numerous sabotage operations,
blowing up bridges, kidnapping enemy agents, and generally causing
mayhem in the enemy camps. Perhaps the most famous Rhodesian SAS
operation was Operation Bastille. On Good Friday in 1979, a column of
Rhodesian SAS soldiers crossed Lake Kariba by ferry, landing seven
ageing, but heavily armed Land Rover Sabers. These were driven some 120
miles to the Zambian capital Lusaka, where they laid siege to the home of
guerrilla leader Joshua Nkomo. In a heavy and sustained attack, Nkomo
escaped death, but the operation proceeded flawlessly, and before Zambian
military forces had any clue of what was taking place, the Rhodesians were
heading south again.
The final SAS operation was codenamed Operation Quartz, and its
objective was to stage a coup to prevent future Zimbabwean president
Robert Mugabe from taking power. In the early weeks of 1980, various
assassination attempts were carried out. One particular plan saw an SAS
operative hidden at Salisbury International Airport with a Strela shoulder-
fired anti-aircraft missile intended to bring down Robert Mugabe’s
scheduled flight. The attack, however, would have killed many innocent
civilians too, and the trooper involved in the end thought better of it. The
operation crumbled in the end.
The war was inevitably lost. It was, fundamentally, an unjust war, but
Rhodesian military virtuosity remains recognized and admired nearly 40
years after the dissolution of the Rhodesian Security Forces on December
31, 1980. For a long time, the affiliation of Rhodesian and British SAS
remained steadfast, but as years have passed, and as British colonialism has
become increasingly discredited, official recognition has tended to wane.
Nonetheless, informal recognition continues, and C Squadron remains
vacant.
The Rhodesian SAS made no serious effort to use black troops.
Throughout its short existence it remained an exclusively white unit,
forswearing even the casual use of pseudo tactics. A version of the Special
Air Service was adopted by the Zimbabwe National Army, the successor of
the Rhodesian Security Forces, but perhaps not surprisingly, it receives no
recognition whatsoever from the parent unit.
Among Commonwealth nations, both Australia and New Zealand have
Special Air Service regiments, each wearing the winged dagger badge and
claiming as their motto “Who Dares Wins.” Members also wear the same
beige/tan beret as the British SAS. Neither, however, are in any way
affiliated with the British SAS, even if common origins do exist.
The Kiwi SAS came about through a disproportionate number of New
Zealand personnel involved in the iconic Allied Long Range Desert Group,
a deep penetration reconnaissance unit active in North Africa between 1940
and 1943, and in the Aegean and Balkans for the remainder of World War
II. The unit was officially formed as the New Zealand Special Air Service,
or NZSAS, on May 1, 1955. By the end of that year, the NZSAS was in
action in Malaya alongside other Commonwealth contingents. A total of
133 members were attached to the Malayan in various squadrons.
Originally, the NZSAS wore the maroon beret of the British Parachute
Regiment, the original beret worn by the SAS. The British SAS changed
this to the tan beret in late 1957, but the NZSAS did not follow suit until
December 1985.
The Australian SAS, known officially as the Special Air Service
Regiment, shares no origins with early SAS operations in North Africa, nor
does it claim any influence from the Long Range Desert Group, which was
not quite so well represented by Australians as it was by Kiwis. According
to the official history of the regiment, it draws on the experience of special
force commandos – notably Z-Special Unit, M-Special Unit, the
Independent Companies (early commandos) and the Coastwatchers – taking
its name and its basic ideology and operational procedures from observing
the Malayan.[5]
The 1st Special Air Service Company was established on July 25, 1957.
In 1960, the company became part of the Royal Australian Regiment
(RAR) and was given the responsibility for commando and Special Forces
operations. The regiment's primary wartime role was divisional-level
reconnaissance. On August 20, 1964, the SAS gained regimental status and
was expanded to two sabre squadrons and a headquarters, severing the link
with the RAR. The raising of a third squadron was approved on April 30,
1965, as part of an overall expansion of the Australian Army.
The SAS After Malaya
“The purpose of this long-range jungle group was to go and live in the
jungle, to establish good relations with the aborigines and locate and
destroy the guerrillas either by themselves or in conjunction with regular
forces.” – Anthony Short, In Pursuit of Mountain Rats
The Sultanate of Oman, located on the southeast edge of the Arabian
Peninsula, has long been a British ally, dating to the earliest emergence of
British economic and naval dominance of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian
Sea. The Omani Sultanate located its seat of power in 1837 on the East
African island of Zanzibar, and Zanzibar remained an independent
Sultanate, closely allied with the British, until 1964. Although never
formally annexing it, the British exercised varying degrees of control over
both the Omani and Zanzibari Sultanate.
In the post-World War II period, the British were deeply involved on a
level of “Military Cooperation,” which in practical terms meant that the
British ran the army and ensured the function of the essential institutions of
the Omani state. But internally, the Sultanate was both weak and unpopular,
and thus it was prone to unrest and rebellion. It was the British, for the most
part, supported by organized local elements, who kept the Sultan in power.
Against this backdrop, a major rebellion erupted in 1963 against the rule
of Sultan Said bin Taimur, staged by tribal rivals of the Dhofar Liberation
Front (DLF). This rebellion would simmer and flare periodically until
finally stamped out in 1976. The DLF was gradually taken over by Marxist
rebels, supported by the communist regime of neighboring Yemen. As a
consequence, the war in Oman escalated, first under the banner of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf, and later, in
1974, led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO). Soon
after this, the internal security situation deteriorated significantly.
 In July of 1970, Sultan Said abdicated following a bloodless palace coup
orchestrated by the crown prince, Qaboos bin Said, and key members of the
Sultan's British staff. The new Sultan Qaboos was very much a British
establishment figure, a product of Sandhurst Military Academy and
Anglicized by many years as a resident in Britain. With his British military
advisors, either seconded or contracted, he ramped up internal
counterinsurgency operations and seriously took on the rebel groups.

Sultan Qaboos
The SAS was deployed to Oman in early 1959, with some diverted from
Malaya and others from Borneo. The details of SAS involvement in
operations in Oman are not widely known, reflecting the fact that much of
the work of the SAS during the British military engagement in the Omani
Sultanate was covert. Individual SAS men were scattered through the
standing military formation, training and leading the very small-unit, with
behind the lines type of reconnaissance and hunter/killer operations for
which they were gaining such a reputation. In particular, towards the end of
the rebellion, the SAS was deployed independent and unattached to the
Sultan’s Armed Forces, ostensibly for deniability purposes.
The main action for which Oman is memorable is the Battle of Mirbat,
fought on July 19, 1972. On the morning of that day, a force of about 200
PFLOAG rebels attacked a house just outside the coastal Port of Mirbat, in
which nine SAS members were billeted. After an intense battle lasting
several hours, during which the house was almost overrun several times, the
attackers were eventually beaten back.
The story only recently came to light in all its detail thanks to a memoir
written by then Trooper Roger Cole of B Squadron 22 SAS. In an account
that might, under any other circumstance, have seemed sensationalized,
Cole described the CO, Captain Michael Kealy, braving a curtain of enemy
fire to bring a 25-pound artillery piece into action, keeping it out of enemy
hands and bringing it to bear against the enemy. For this, he won a
Distinguished Service Order, and he has since been recommended for a
posthumous award of the Victoria Cross.
Mirbat was a major reversal for PFLOAG, at least from a propaganda
standpoint, but such actions were not the day-to-day-stuff of SAS
operations in Oman. Of far greater value was the ongoing, unconventional
warfare campaign against the PFLOAG that caused many to defect. It also
provided vital intelligence, augmenting and working alongside the SAF and
local militias.
In 1959, a third, territorial, or reserve SAS Regiment was formed. This
was 23 Special Air Service Regiment (Reserve), which joined the existing
21 Special Air Service Regiment (Artists) (Reserve). Notable was the fact
that, unlike the regular 22 SAS Regiment, it accepted members of the
general population without prior military service.
In 1960, the SAS barracks was moved from Malvern in Worcester to a
custom facility at RAF Credenhill, Herefordshire, known as Stirling Lines.
This would remain the home of the Regiment to present day. Regent's Park
Barracks is the home of 21 (Reserve) SAS, and 23 (Reserve) SAS is housed
in Birmingham.
While the British military establishment was engaged in support of the
Omani Sultanate, it was also active early in 1963 in the newly independent
state of Malaysia. Although official independence was recognized in 1957,
it was only on September 16, 1963, that the Federation of Malaya, North
Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore was established.[6] At the time, Indonesian
President Sukarno opposed the idea of a greater Malaysia, and he had
ambitions to incorporate North Borneo into Indonesia, which he had
successfully achieved with the former Dutch colonies in western New
Guinea. An undeclared war therefore began with Indonesian sponsorship of
informal raids and guerrilla attacks on Borneo, and by 1964, regular
Indonesian troops were beginning to appear in the conflict. At that point,
British and Commonwealth troops were called in.
 Sukarno
Borneo exists in the collective memory of the SAS as an era of intense
acculturation to jungle warfare, and in many respects, it was the coming of
age for the SAS as a covert, long-range patrol and reconnaissance
formation. The division of the Island of Borneo, then as now, is perhaps
two-thirds at the southern portion of the island falling under Indonesian
administration, with the northern third divided between Malaysia and
Brunei. The terrain is heavily forested throughout, with a central watershed,
the highest points of which mark the frontier.
In July 1967, a major operation codenamed Operation Claret was
launched, involving a daring series of cross-border operations into
Indonesia on the part of British and Malaysian troops. The objectives of
these was to gather intelligence, win the hearts and minds of the indigenous
population, interdict Indonesian forces, keep them unbalanced, and
ultimately to push them back from the frontier. In many cases, the SAS and
allied local patrols were sent out strictly to gather reconnaissance, leaving
larger infantry formations to follow up on the information and stage attacks.
The SAS also implemented a “shoot and scoot” strategy, again to keep the
Indonesians on edge and to limit SAS casualties. They worked in
combination with more orthodox infantry units under SAS command,
known as “Killer Groups,” utilizing members of the Guards Independent
Parachute Company, and later the Gurkha Independent Parachute Company.
[7]

This was the beginning of the standard SAS four-man patrol, which
would ultimately become the typical SAS patrol configuration. Four
individuals in a patrol unit continues to be regarded as the lowest tenable
number, allowing for an extremely light and agile unit that is still capable of
carrying sufficient firepower and ordnance to do serious damage. It also
would allow for one wounded member to be carried out by two surviving
members and covered by a third. A balance of specializations become more
acutely necessary under these conditions, and those specializations would
typically be signals, medic, linguist, forward-air-control, and demolitions.
Northern Ireland
“It was a war, but there was a curious reason why it was never called
one.” – Noel Barber, War of the Running Dogs
During the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, insecurity and violence in
Northern Ireland reached the level of a virtual civil war. The goal of the
overwhelmingly Protestant majority in Northern Ireland was to remain part
of the United Kingdom, while the goal of the Nationalists and Republicans,
almost exclusively Catholic, was for Northern Ireland to become part of the
Republic of Ireland. The conflict, however, was territorial, not religious,
and at its center lay two mutually exclusive ideals of national identity. The
main republican militia was the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA),
known simply as the IRA ,which split from the “Official IRA” in 1969. It
was this organization, prepared to accept nothing less than a British
withdrawal, that drove the conflict. When secret talks with the British
government in 1972 collapsed, the IRA leadership resolved to erode the
British presence in Northern Ireland through a war of attrition.
 The SAS involvement in Northern Ireland was certainly controversial, but
initially, in the early 1970s, it took the by now usual form of small teams
and individuals working alongside regular units. Early in 1972, the SAS
was tasked with establishing a new undercover unit for surveillance
operations against suspected members of Irish paramilitary groups. Part of
the Army Intelligence Corps, the covert group was known as the Special
Reconnaissance Unit, or 14 Field Security and Intelligence Company, or
simply the “Det.” A special training wing of the SAS was established, and
candidates for 14 Company were selected from regular battalions and
trained in an eight-week course. The deployment of the first 120 men took
place in November 1972. In 1987, the unit was absorbed by the newly
formed United Kingdom Special Forces Directorate.
After 1976, as the situation in Northern Ireland steadily deteriorated,
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson made the public announcement that
the SAS were to be formally deployed to Ulster. This was very unusual,
primarily because all SAS deployments not only tended to be clandestine,
but also because the SAS were rarely involved in “soft-touch” operations,
which were certainly required in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, if the
British government was prescribing something tougher in dealing with
nationalist groups, then it would seem unwise to make the fact public.
At first, operations took the form mainly of surveillance and intelligence
gathering, usually by way of foot patrols and covert Observation Positions
(OP). However, as the year progressed, more aggressive, covert operations
began to be authorized. For example, in March 1976, suspected IRA
commander Sean McKenna was abducted by the SAS from his home in the
Republic and driven across the border, where he was picked up by a regular
army unit.
Various ambushes and other interceptions, acting on tip-offs and
intelligence, tended to be more characteristic of the SAS. The classic
counterinsurgency difficulty of isolating guerrilla units within a sympathetic
and politically active population, deeply hostile to police and army, required
a great emphasis on intelligence. Collecting the intelligence had to be
followed by quick, hard-hitting action. This was precisely the stuff of the
SAS.
 By the 1980s, however, accusations leveled by the Republicans that the
British were employing a shoot-to-kill policy were becoming difficult to
ignore. Suspected IRA members and suspected criminals were deliberately
killed without due process. It must be remembered that the “Troubles” did
not amount to a declared war, so under civil law, such extrajudicial killing
and assassinations were obviously illegal. That said, it was a war in all but
name, and military responses, whether overt or covert, were inevitable.
While the Army and the RUC might have fielded the blame, the trigger
finger in most cases was the SAS, and numerous examples have since come
to light. This includes the Loughgall ambush, an operation that would
counter an orchestrated IRA attack against an RUC barracks in the village
of Loughgall using a front loader carrying a bomb device. An SAS team
had acquired advanced intelligence and waited in ambush positions. When
the bomb was detonated, destroying half the building, the SAS opened fire,
killing all the IRA members.
On February 25, 1985, three Catholic IRA members were shot dead by
the SAS as they returned to an arms cache in the village of Strabane. No
attempt to detain or apprehend the men was made. In this, and numerous
similar instances, it might be argued that it was not the role of the SAS to
make an arrest, and retrieving weapons from a arms cache amounted to an
act of war. Nonetheless, such were the practical constraints under which
the Regiment, and the British Army as a whole, functioned during the
“Troubles.”
Other operations were even more questionable. On March 6, 1988, the
SAS shot and killed three members of the IRA after a lengthy intelligence
operation revealed their intention of mounting a bomb attack against a
British military installation on the British island of Gibraltar. SAS details in
plain-clothes approached the three men in the forecourt of a fuel station
before opening fire. All three were killed, only to be found unarmed and not
in possession of a bomb. This led to accusations that the British government
had conspired to murder the men, but the British government was able to
deflect legal proceedings by claiming that Gibraltar was not part of the
British Isles.
 Nonetheless, legal and ethical issues swirled around the killings for a long
time, even as the British continued trying to sweep things under the carpet.
The assassins responsible escaped consequences, but that incident,
investigated and televised as “Death on the Rock,” was the culmination of a
slow-burning official response that began with the Stalker/Sampson Inquiry,
which opened on May 24, 1984. This inquiry undertook a detailed
investigation into the shoot-to-kill accusations. It was conducted by Deputy
Chief Constable John Stalker of the Greater Manchester Police, and it
looked into three specific cases. These included the 1982 killing of three
unarmed IRA members at an RUC checkpoint in east Lurgan, County
Armagh. It also reviewed the 1982 killing, by an RUC undercover unit, of
Michael Tighe and the wounding of his friend Martin McCauley at an IRA
arms cache on a farm near Lurgan, County Armagh. Finally, it investigated
the 1982 killing at an RUC checkpoint in Mullacreavie, County Armagh of
two INLA members, Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll. Stalker himself
came under a cloud of suspicion regarding his impartiality during the
investigation, leading to his suspension. Accusations of files being
destroyed and official tampering plagued the British government
throughout, and in the end, the findings of the inquiry were never made
public.
In general, the British public was sympathetic to the shoot-to-kill policy
when it came to dealing with the IRA, if only based on fighting terror with
terror. And as far as the SAS was concerned, this was precisely the type of
operation, in the context of modern warfare, for which it had been raised,
and why it remained in existence. From a purely military perspective,
conventional forces were not configured to operate in the context of
counterinsurgency, other than in garrison, patrol and ground coverage roles.
Operation Nimrod
“We swear to God and to the British people and Government that no
danger whatsoever will be inflicted on the British and non-Iranian
hostages.” - Salim
If the British public in general stood behind the work of the SAS during
the Troubles and generally supported the Regiment, much of it had to do
with the iconic Iranian Embassy Siege that took place in London in the
spring of 1980. At 11h30 on the morning of April 30, 1980, six Iranian
gunmen forced their way into the Iranian Embassy at Princes Gate, London,
easily overpowering diplomatic protection squad details and taking a total
of 25 hostages. The attackers referred to themselves as the Democratic
Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan, and they were
protesting the oppression of Khuzestan by the then Iranian leader, Ayatollah
Khomeini. They also demanded the release of 91 political prisoners held in
Iran and an aircraft to fly themselves and their hostages out of Britain.
 Steve White’s picture of the embassy
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in characteristic style,
determined that safe passage would not be granted, and a siege ensued. The
negotiations achieved very little, and on the sixth day of the siege, an
Iranian hostage was killed and his body thrown from an upper story
window.
 Meanwhile, B Squadron, 22 SAS, currently serving the SAS Anti-
Terrorist team, was transported to London from Hereford and installed in a
building close to the Iranian Embassy. An “Immediate Action” (IA) plan
was very quickly framed to deal with any rapid deterioration of the situation
as intelligence was gathered and a more comprehensive plan was put in
place. Microphones were dropped down the embassy's chimneys and
roadworks used to disguise the sound of holes carefully drilled through the
walls of adjacent buildings. Blueprints were studied and embassy janitorial
staff consulted, while SAS teams under cover of darkness scoured the outer
building.
With the killing of the first hostage, authorization of force to end the siege
was given. While negotiations continued, this time with the purpose of
stalling for time, operational control was passed from the Metropolitan
Police to the Ministry of Defense, and soon afterwards, the SAS got the go-
ahead to bring the matter to a close.
Operation Nimrod, as the hostage rescue mission was codenamed,
required the embassy to be stormed from all sides, with multiple assault
teams simultaneously entering the building on all floors. The operation
depended on pinpoint accuracy and smooth coordination, utilizing
diversionary explosions to cover entry through the main windows of SAS
personnel, who would abseil down the side of the building from the roof.
At precisely 19h23 on May 5, 1980, the operation commenced. A team
located on the roof blew a percussive charge down the skylight, shaking the
entire building, while another enormous explosion blasted open a first-floor
window on the front of the embassy building, seconds after which a four-
man assault team entered. Inside was a BBC sound man, Sim Harris,
trapped in the building when he had been applying for an Iranian visa. He
was quickly taken out onto the balcony.
At the rear of the building, one SAS trooper became tangled in his
abseiling gear and was hanging halfway down the wall. Stun grenades,
thrown through smashed windows below, set curtains alight, but the man
was soon cut free, and he dropped heavily onto the ground.
 Inside the Telex room on the second floor, the hostage-takers began firing
indiscriminately, killing one captive and wounding another. As SAS entered
the room, the terrorists dropped their weapons and hid themselves amongst
the hostages. Two were immediately identified, put against a wall and shot.
With the hostages secured, the reserve teams were brought in to assist in
retrieval. Troopers lined the central staircase as each hostage was brought
down and led through the rear doors to the back garden. Halfway down, a
terrorist was identified holding a hand grenade. Unable to open fire without
risking hitting the hostages or other troopers, the man was hit with an MP5
stock and shot as he fell.
Once outside, the hostages were all handcuffed and ordered to lay down.
A head count revealed one too many hostages, and another terrorist was
soon identified masquerading as a hostage. He narrowly avoided being
returned to the building to be shot; he was saved only when it was pointed
out to the trooper restraining him that the entire operation was playing out
on live television. In the end, Fowzi Nejad, the only surviving terrorist, was
tried and sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the siege.
In total, Operation Nimrod lasted 17 minutes and involved 30–35 SAS
members. One hostage was killed and two others seriously wounded, with
all but one of the terrorists killed. The operation took place in broad
daylight, and it was filmed by newsreel cameras on the scene. This marked
something of a change for the SAS, exposing its operations, and, of course,
its virtuosity, to the general public. Suddenly the SAS was a known
quantity, and massive applications for new recruits followed. It also
somewhat rehabilitated the reputation of a new breed of British heroes,
which helped to carry it through the “shoot-to-kill” controversy brewing
over actions in Ireland.
The Falklands
“The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.” –
Jorge Luis Borges
 Members of B Squadron parachuting during the conflict
The last war fought by the British that did not involve an international
coalition was the Falklands War, fought between April 2 and June 14, 1982.
The Falklands War was a British response to an invasion of the Falkland
Islands by Argentina, which had for many years claimed sovereignty to the
Falklands. The invasion occurred on April 2, 1982, as Argentina seized the
main Archipelago, as well as South Georgia and the South Sandwich
Islands the following day. Three days later, the British government
dispatched a naval task force to the region. The war lasted 74 days until it
ended on June 14 with an Argentine surrender.
One of the first recorded SAS operations was Operation Paraguay, an
operation to retake South Georgia Island. The details of it remain unclear,
but the attack was to be conducted, under difficult conditions, by two
Wessex helicopters coming down on the Fortuna Glacier while a third made
it home. The operation, completed on a second attempt three days later,
involved Royal Marine Commandos, the Special Boat Service, and the
SAS. The Argentine garrison on the island surrendered without firing a
shot.
 Better documented are the activities of D Squadron, tasked to conduct
classic SAS hit-and-run raids behind enemy lines, and G squadron, which
was tasked to conduct covert reconnaissance on enemy targets and gather
intelligence. B Squadron was apparently tasked with “examining the
possibility” of a raid on an airbase on the Argentine mainland in Tierra del
Fuego.
The main work took place on the main islands, and this was, once again,
forward reconnaissance. 10 four-man patrols were inserted into the
Archipelago. Moving by night and hiding up in slit trenches by day, they
made their way to various points that would be targeted a week later by the
Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines. One of the most important targets
was the Argentinean airbase and garrison located at Goose Green.
Nighttime was the most active time, and regular situation reports were
returned by Morse code to the HMS Hermes, where they were logged.
Initial reports sent back by G squadron stated that 600 men - a full
Argentine battalion - were present at Goose Green.[8] 8 FMA IA 58 Pucará
ground attack aircraft were visible, as well as a fuel dump and basic anti-
aircraft defenses. An airstrike was called in on these targets. As the
Paratroopers and Royal Marines moved in, G Squadron pulled back.
As this was going on, Operation Mikado, plans by B Squadron for an
attack on the Argentine airbase at Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, were being
finalized. The plan was simply to land in two C130 transport aircraft and
destroy all the aircraft, while at the same time disabling Exocet missiles,
which posed a significant threat to the Naval fleet. From there, they were to
hit the officer’s mess and kill all the pilots. Abandoning the C130’s, the
attack force needed to evade capture for 50 miles to reach the Chilean
border.
B squadron assembled at the Ascension Isles and loaded, fully equipped,
into the two C130’s. At the last minute, however, the operation was deemed
simply too high-risk, and it was abandoned.[9]
A second version of the plan was to insert a smaller, 8-man team by
helicopter into the hills surrounding the airbase. Once there, they would
conduct a covert entry, plant explosives, extract themselves, and escape to
the Chilean border. From Chile, they would catch a scheduled flight home.
If the first landing zone could not be secured, then, as a secondary option,
the squadron would land on the Chilean coast and hike across the isthmus.
In the event, the first landing zone proved untenable, so the helicopter was
landed and destroyed on the Chilean border. Laden with equipment, the
team set off on a long overnight march, but upon checking in with
headquarters at dawn, it was revealed that a news report had shown the
remains of a helicopter, so obviously the Argentines were fully aware that
something was afoot. Some 2,000 Argentine troops were soon swarming
the countryside, and the decision was taken once again to scrap the
mission.
The team now went into a recovery and extraction phase, so they likely
dumped some of their equipment and set off for the Chilean border.
According to most accounts, all returned home safely.
Following the British airstrikes against the Argentinean airbase at Port
Stanley, Argentinean air assets were dispersed to Pebble Island to the north
of the Archipelago. Included were 11 FMA IA 58 Pucará ground attack
aircraft that could devastate the British landings, so this threat had to be
removed. That task fell to D squadron, but with little intelligence to work
with, a small reconnaissance team was inserted blind. The assault team was
launched by helicopter from the HMS Hermes, flying in at very low level,
and the mission succeeded. All 11 aircraft were destroyed.
In a separate incident on May 19, a Sea King helicopter loaded with
members of D squadron Mountain Troop crashed after it reportedly hit an
albatross. 20 men died, making it the largest single loss of SAS personnel
since World War II.
The Argentine surrender, when it occurred, was sudden and dramatic, and
the Falklands War ended with less of a roar than a whimper. Militarily, the
conflict remains the largest air-naval combat operation between modern
forces since the end of World War II. The role of the SAS, 40 years after its
original creation, had evolved to the point that the forces used pinpoint
precision and a high degree of professionalism in a manner that would most
certainly have made Colonel David Stirling proud.
 The Gulf War
“Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to
cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.” – Colin Powell
When war broke out in the Persian Gulf in late 1990, Britain joined the
coalition and committed a large number of forces, including 22 SAS.
Initially deployed without a clear role, the SAS anticipated a quiet war
against the backdrop of an ultra-modern conflict, with their traditional
reconnaissance role seconded almost entirely to U.S. Special Forces and
electronic surveillance methods.
This was seen as something of a defining moment for the Regiment.
Traditional methods of long-range reconnaissance suddenly seemed less
relevant. It was, however, thanks to the efforts of Commander of UK Forces
General Sir Peter de la Billière, an ex-SAS officer, that SAS was given the
opportunity to engage.
Sir Peter had strongly advocated the use of special forces behind Iraqi
lines, and bearing in mind the desert origins of the SAS, he persuaded his
American counterpart, General Norman Schwarzkopf, of the need for small
fighting columns operating deep behind enemy lines. General Schwarzkopf
was unconvinced that the SAS could do what the AWACS and an F16 could
not, and he also worried about the waste of resources that would entail
having to rescue SAS members if things went wrong.
Nonetheless, with Operation Desert Storm underway, the SAS were
ordered to move across the border from Saudi Arabia into southern Iraq to
do what they did best. The main objective was to search for Saddam
Hussein’s mobile SCUD missile launchers, the single biggest threat to
Coalition forces, as well as Saudi Arabia and Israel. A and D squadron
drove into the Iraqi desert on search-and-destroy missions. Moving in
fighting columns of eight vehicles, the SAS pushed north, traveling by night
and laying up under camouflage nets by day. Whenever and wherever
patrols located Iraqi communications installations that could be associated
with the SCUD emplacements, they marked them out for airstrikes. When
the opportunity presented itself, raids and ambushes were also conducted.
SAS columns also undertook battlefield damage assessments, surveying the
aftermath of Coalition airstrikes.
In the end, far from a quiet war, the SAS had a busy time, returning to
their roots as a mobile desert reconnaissance and attack force, this time in
the context of a state-of-the-art war. This gave SAS the chance to combine
their traditional skills with modern technology, proving that nothing had
been lost in the process.
In between these more high profile operations, the SAS has been
deployed in support of numerous smaller, regional wars, and various
hostage type crises here and there. For example, SAS supported an African
leader in suppressing coup attempts in at least one British colony, supported
U.S. DEA agents in the siege at Waco, handled hijackings and high profile
hostage crises, dealt with the 1987 riot at Peterhead Prison in Bosnia, and
served in Sierra Leone. SAS also has recently served in Afghanistan.
 Online Resources
Other World War II titles by Charles River Editors
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Bibliography
Adams, James (1987). Secret Armies. Hutchinson. ISBN 0-553-28162-3.
Breuer, William B. (2001). Daring missions of World War II. John Wiley
and Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-40419-4.
Chant, Christopher (1988). The Handbook of British Regiments.
Routledge. ISBN 0-415-00241-9.
Davis, Brian Leigh (1983). British Army Uniforms and Insignia of World
War Two. Arms and Armour Press. ISBN 0-85368-609-2.
de B. Taillon, J. Paul (2000). The evolution of Special Forces in Counter-
Terrorism, The British and American Experiences. Greenwood. ISBN 0-
275-96922-3.
Edgeworth, Anthony; De St. Jorre, John (1981). The Guards. Ridge
Press/Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-54376-1.
Geraghty, Tony (1980). Who Dares Wins: The Story of the Special Air
Service, 1950–1980. Book Club Association. ISBN 085368457X.
Griffin, P.D (2006). Encyclopedia of Modern British Army Regiments.
Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-3929-X.
Fremont-Barnes, Gregory (2009). Who Dares Wins — The SAS and the
Iranian Embassy Siege 1980. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84603-395-0.
Haskew, Michael E (2007). Encyclopaedia of Elite Forces in the Second
World War. Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-84415-577-4.
Kemp, Anthony (1993). The SAS at War 1941–1945. Signet. ISBN
0451174569.
 Molinari, Andrea (2007). Desert Raiders: Axis and Allied Special Forces
1940–43. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84603-006-2.
Morgan, Mike (2000). Daggers Drawn: Second World War heroes of the
SAS and SBS. Sutton. ISBN 0-7509-2509-4.
Otway, Lieutenant-Colonel T.B.H (1990). The Second World War 1939–
1945 Army – Airborne Forces. Imperial War Museum. ISBN 0-901627-57-
7.
Ryan, Chris (2009). Fight to Win. Century. ISBN 978-1-84605-666-6.
Scholey, Pete; Forsyth, Frederick (2008). Who Dares Wins: Special
Forces Heroes of the SAS. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 1-84603-311-X.
Shortt, James; McBride, Angus (1981). The Special Air Service. Osprey
Publishing. ISBN 0-85045-396-8.
Silvestri, Enzo (2008). Thief in the Night. Lulu.com. ISBN 0-9798164-8-
3.
Stevens, Gordon (2005). The Originals — The Secret History of the Birth
of the SAS in Their Own Words. Ebury Press. ISBN 978-0-09-190177-6.
Thompson, Leroy (1994). SAS: Great Britain's Elite Special Air Service.
Zenith Imprint. ISBN 0-87938-940-0.
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[1]
Some reports claim it was a figure of twenty-two killed.
[2]
Special Branch is a section of most Commonwealth police forces concerned with internal security. Typically an external
intelligence organization dealt with matters of international espionage while Special Branch was concerned with internal
intelligence. In Malaya, Kenya and later in Rhodesia, Special Branch provided most operational intelligence, developing
internal networks and pseudo operations to fine tune the acquisition of up-to-date, day-to-day operational intelligence.
[3]
The Rhodesian War, also the Zimbabwe Civil War, or Zimbabwe Liberation Struggle.
[4]
Between 1953 and 1963, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, modern day Zambia and Zimbabwe, were federated along with
Nyasaland, modern Malawi.
[5]
Both Z Special Unit and M Special Unit were joint Australian, New Zealand, Dutch and British military intelligence special
force reconnaissance units deployed as part of the Services Reconnaissance Department in the South West Pacific theater of
World War II. Both saw action in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands between 1943–1945, against the Empire of Japan.
They were the successor to the Coastwatchers.
[6]
Singapore was expelled from the Federation in 1965 due to general incompatibility.

[7]
In 1948, the British 6th Airborne Division was disbanded, and the Army’s regular parachute force scaled down to a single, 16th
Parachute Brigade. As part of this reorganization, the 1st (Guards) Parachute Battalion was reduced and re-designated as the
16th (Guards) Independent Company, the Parachute Regiment.
[8]
This number had grown to 1,300 men by the time main attack was launched.
[9]

The cancellation occurred the day after the fatal Sea King crash mentioned below.