X-Nico

29 unusual facts about Special Air Service


1980 World Snooker Championship

The coverage of the final was interrupted by coverage of the Iranian Embassy Siege, as the BBC took the snooker off the air to bring live coverage about the SAS storming the Iranian Embassy in London.

1988 in the Irish Republican Army

6 March - Three unidentified IRA members, suspected of having a remote control explosive dentonator in their possession, are shot and killed by a team of British SAS agents in Gibraltar.

Armand Gatti

Captured, tortured, and sentenced to a concentration camp in Hamburg where he was forced to work in a diving bell at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Gatti eventually escaped and joined a British Special Air Service special forces team.

Carmen Proetta

Carmen Proetta is an independent witness to Operation Flavius, a controversial British Army operation in which the Special Air Service shot dead three unarmed Provisional IRA members in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988.

Communist Insurgency War

In 1969, the Malaysian government responded to the Communist resurgence by establishing its own special forces: VAT 69, which was modeled after the British Special Air Service (SAS).

Following the departure of the British SAS team, a training detachment from the New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) took over the training programme and trained another 208 men.

EverestMax

The 6 person cycling expedition, led by Dominic Faulkner, an ex UK SAS soldier, set out on 21 December 2005 and two members of the team achieved the summit of Everest 5 months later on 21 May 2006.

HM Prison Armagh

Three women in Armagh took part in the 1980 hunger strike: Mairéad Nugent, Mary Doyle and Mairéad Farrell, who was shot by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988.

International Bodyguard Association

The IBA is run by the James Shortt, also known as James Shortt of Castleshort, or The Baron Castleshort, who was accused 2009 by a British tabloid newspaper as passing himself off as a much-decorated SAS and Parachute Regiment veteran.

Joshua Nkomo

The real target of the second attack was General Peter Walls, head of the COMOPS (Commander, Combined Operations), in charge of the Special Forces, including the SAS and the Selous Scouts.

But the mission was finally aborted and attempted again, unsuccessfully, by the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS).

Mohd Sutarji Bin Kasmin

He has also attended the counter-terrorism special courses in the US Navy SEALs BUD Training Centre (1977), Royal Marines Special Boat Service (1984) and Special Air Service in 1984.

Operation Darkness

Operation Darkness follows a squad of British SAS soldiers fighting the Nazis across the European Theater.

Patrick Hore-Ruthven

She also worked in Intelligence with the anti-Nazi Arab Brotherhood of Freedom, while Hore-Ruthven joined the newly formed SAS.

Paul Magee

Paul "Dingus" Magee (born 30 January 1948) is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1980.

Peter Bray

The former member of the British Army's Special Air Service Boat Trooper was aiming to raise £100,000 for two children's hospices.

Peter Mason

Captain Peter Mason is a former member of the post-war SAS Baker Team who were issued a licence to kill by the British government.

Post Impact

NUNS President Miranda Harrison recruits Parker to lead an expedition—including ex-SAS Sarah Henley and Anna Starndorf, Gregor Starndorf's daughter, to find out who controls the satellite and destroy it.

Potassium cyanide

A number of prominent persons were killed or committed suicide using potassium cyanide, including members of the Young Bosnia and members of the Nazi Party, such as Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, World War II era British agents (using purpose-made suicide pills), computer scientist Alan Turing, and various religious cult suicides such as by the Peoples Temple and Heaven's Gate.

Ronald Reid-Daly

Reid-Daly, who was born in Salisbury, then capital of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, entered military service in 1951 and served with the all-Rhodesian "C" Squadron of the Special Air Service (SAS) in counter-insurgency operations in Malaya.

Saint-Marcel, Morbihan

Saint-Marcel houses the Museum of the Breton Resistance which commemorates the uprising of the Maquis of Saint-Marcel (3,000 fighters) and 200 Free French SAS parachutists in June 1944.

Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs v Yunus Rahmatullah

He was detained in Iraq by British Special Air Service (SAS) forces in 2004, during the United States' occupation of Iraq.

Sledgehammer

The British SAS counter terrorist team used sledge hammers to gain access to rooms during the 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege.

Terry Brighton

His parishes included St Martin’s in Hereford, where he stood in as chaplain to the SAS and first developed an interest in military history.

The Maltby Collection

A former SAS man from Belfast, he nevertheless admits to having a "horribly subservient streak".

The Protector's War

In the meantime, a small group of British soldiers, led by Sir Nigel Loring, Alleyne Loring and John Hordle, formerly of the Special Air Service, are on their way to Portland, having left England by sailing ship after freeing Sir Nigel from his imprisonment that was imposed by King Charles III.

Tim McOwan

His service with 1RAR included an attachment to the Rifle Company Butterworth, in Malaysia while his service with the SAS included a two-year secondment to the headquarters commanding the British Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service.

Ulrich Wegener

Counter-terrorist units were still a relatively unheard of form of combating terrorism and the only truly established groups at the time were Britain's Special Air Service and Israel's Sayeret Matkal.

Wivenhoe House

The house once also served as the headquarters of the SAS.


11e régiment parachutiste de choc

The 11e régiment parachutiste de choc ("11th shock parachute regiment), often called 11e choc, was a parachute elite regiment of the French Army. It used to serve as the armed branch of the SDECE. Its insignia, designed by lieutenant Dupas, features Bagheera in the moonlight and a golden wing. The motto is Qui ose gagne ("who dares wins"), in continuation of the tradition of the British Special Air Service.

737 Naval Air Squadron

Her helicopter, the Westland Wessex HAS.Mk3 XP142, nicknamed "Humphrey", was responsible for the remarkable rescue of 16 SAS men from Fortuna Glacier and the subsequent detection and disabling of the Argentinian submarine Santa Fe.

Action Force

Action Force characters have appeared as limited edition toys and comic characters as part of the International G.I. Joe Convention, under the name Special Action Force or SAF (a riff on the SAS; not to be confused with the Philippines' real-life Special Action Force).

Company quartermaster sergeant

Squadron quartermaster sergeant is the equivalent in the Royal Armoured Corps, Special Air Service, Royal Engineers, Royal Corps of Signals, Army Air Corps, Royal Army Medical Corps, Royal Logistic Corps, Honourable Artillery Company, and formerly in the Royal Corps of Transport.

Conflict: Desert Storm II

Set during the first Gulf War, the four squad members of either the British 22nd SAS or the US Army Delta Force must battle their way through ten missions and take out Saddam Hussein's men.

George Markstein

For the cinema he wrote the initial synopsis for the 1982 SAS embassy-storming film Who Dares Wins, which was then turned into a novel The Tiptoe Boys in thirty days flat by author James Follett and then into a screenplay by veteran screenwriter Reginald Rose.

Long Range Surveillance

Joint training exercises have involved units from British TA SAS, France's 13e RDP, Belgium's ESR, Italy's 9th Parachute Assault Regiment and Germany's FSLK200.

Louis Osman

During the Second World War he was a Major in the Intelligence Corps serving with the Combined Operations Headquarters and Special Air Service as a specialist in Air Photography.

Operation Albumen

Aiming to disrupt these operations, British generals in Cairo sent three groups from the Special Boat Squadron (SBS) and one from Stirling's Special Air Service (SAS) to Crete to sabotage the airfields of Heraklion, Kastelli Pediados, Tympaki and Maleme.

Operation Begonia

During World War II, Operation Begonia was the airborne counterpart to the amphibious Operation Jonquil, conducted by British SAS and Eighth Army Airborne between Ancona and Pescara, Italy, from 2-6 October, 1943.

Operation Nelson

During World War II, Operation Nelson was a planned Special Air Service operation scheduled for June, 1944 in the vicinity of the Orléans Gap.

Paddy Mayne

His leadership on the raid had attracted the attention of Captain David Stirling who recruited him as one of the early members of the Special Air Service (SAS).

Pakistan Rangers

This company also participated in a recent exercise with U.K. Special Air Service operators and U.S. Army Rangers stationed in Karachi.

Ramcke Parachute Brigade

After arriving in North Africa in July 1942, the brigade performed excellently, providing a counter to Stirling's Special Air Service, which had been wreaking havoc with the Axis command, control and logistical system.

Rhodesian Air Force

Fireforce comprised units of Selous Scouts, an undercover tracker battalion of 1,500 troops on double pay, 80 percent black, (many recruited by Special Branch from captured guerrillas facing trial and execution) probing ahead of a parachute infantry battalion and up to 200 Special Air Service commandos.

Senoi Praaq

The original 40 troopers were trained by the British units including by the Special Air Service, in particular by Major John Slim.

SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation

The game features several playable special operations forces teams: the United States Navy SEALs, U.K.'s Special Air Service (SAS), Germany's Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK), Spain's Unidad de Operaciones Especiales (UOE), and France's 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine (1er RPIMa).

Tan beret

69 Commando of the Royal Malaysia Police adopted the tan beret as part of their uniform after the beret was conferred by the United Kingdom's 22 SAS to the founding members of 69 Commando (also known as VAT 69 - Very Able Trooper 69) after completing SAS training in 1969.

Tom McClean

Tom McClean is a veteran of both the Parachute Regiment and the SAS and is a survival expert who lived on the island of Rockall from 26 May to 4 July 1985 to affirm Britain's claim to it; this is the longest human occupancy of the island.