Special Air Service (SAS)

First organized at the height of World War II to conduct bold behind-the-lines raids against the Axis armies in northern Africa and then Italy when the prospects of an Allied victory seemed unlikely, the Special Air Service (SAS) has since evolved into a highly specialized, highly trained, highly secret regiment within the army of the United Kingdom. It is designed to be activated in the event of a crisis that calls for precise military intervention rather than the deploying of an entire army. In the often tense post-September 11th international geopolitical environment, the role of special forces has become a critical element of any nation’s counter-terrorism strategy. Much like America’s storied Delta Force and Israel’s elite Sayeret, the SAS provides its government the option to conduct bold if limited strikes as a way to weaken and contain but not entirely defeat a belligerent enemy force, an increasingly attractive option for governments facing crushing expenditures to maintain large-scale military and defense operations.

Background

At a critical point when Britain’s campaign to defeat German General Erwin Rommel’s forces entrenched in northern Africa appeared hopeless, David Stirling, then a lower-echelon officer with the Scottish Guard who was restless with army bureaucracy and British army’s general hesitation to undertake bold initiatives, proposed an audacious idea: take a small detachment of highly trained soldiers and go behind the German lines and conduct precision strikes to disrupt the Germans’ communication lines, transportation systems, and supply lines. Reluctantly, the British Command agreed. The detachment, initially sixty-six men, achieved immediate success in daring night raids to blow up landing fields and supply depots with little loss of Allied life.

The detachment was officially organized as the L Detachment, code for paratroopers that involved air raids, to deliberately mislead German intelligence that might intercept orders being transmitted. The special forces operations became an intrinsic element of the British war strategy as Allied troops moved up the Italian peninsula and eventually into Germany itself. Stirling, dubbed by Hitler the "Phantom Major," became something of a folk hero for the British—he was repeatedly captured by Axis troops only to escape in dramatic fashion.

With the end of the war, however, and government cutbacks in military spending, the Special Air Service was summarily disbanded; however, within a decade the government had reinstated the regiment as part of a defense policy to avert the catastrophe of full-dressed war by deploying the regiment for targeted activity in areas of crisis. Although any member of the British Army could apply for the SAS, the regiment conducted brutal five-week-long selection processes that would weed out more than 80 percent of the applicants. Given the secrecy that surrounded most SAS operations (any operation was initiated only by a direct call from the British prime minister), little was known about the regiment outside British defense circles. Indeed, records much later revealed the SAS’s extensive involvement in controversial campaigns against the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.

The SAS gained a higher profile after the regiment was called on to help rescue twenty-five hostages taken by Iranian radicals at the Iranian embassy in London in 1980. All too aware of the lengthy crisis the American government was then undergoing as a result of similar embassy takeover in Teheran, the British government wanted a swift end to the crisis. The SAS force executed a breathtaking, nearly perfect raid on the embassy, losing only a single hostage while killing four of the five terrorists. The SAS itself suffered no casualties. The raid was celebrated worldwide as an example of how a government would now confront such terroristic standoffs.

Impact

Since that hostage rescue, in addition to proving critical support during Britain’s Falklands War and later as part of the multinational forces in the first Gulf War, the SAS has been deployed for numerous covert operations: against insurgents in Iraq, against the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan; in hostage situations in British posts in Africa, most notably Libya; and in disruption operations during the United Nations occupational forces in Kosovo throughout the 1990s. In addition to these highly secret operations, the SAS provides critical surveillance and intelligence information gathered continuously with state-of-the-art communications networks in their remote training facilities and operational headquarters just outside Hereford on the Welsh border.

Although much is not known about specifics, the SAS does maintain four specialized platoons, designated A, B, D, and G: naval operations (particularly scuba training and harbor maneuvers); air support and paratrooper support; general mobility services for land operations; and mountain operations for high-risk raids in rugged terrain under often formidable weather conditions. With the regiment’s slogan—Who Dares Wins—members of the SAS have become part of contemporary British folklore, distinguished by their signature beige berets and their long hair and shaggy beards.

Defense and national security are highly politicized issues, and governments are reluctant to propose full-scale wars that can prove costly and potentially unpopular. Governments face enormous challenges to maintain national security and protect vested interests—civilian, military, and commercial—in often hostile environments half a world away. Special operations forces such as the SAS are able to act boldly and quietly outside the parameters of conventional warfare, and they have become—along with the use of unmanned drones—increasingly the go-to strategies to protect civilians, to further national security, and to preserve a larger, if increasingly fragile, global peace.

Bibliography

Asher, Michael. Shoot to Kill: From 2Para to the SAS. London: Endeavour, 2014.

Falconer, Duncan. First into Action: A Dramatic Personal Account of Life in the SAS. Thistle, 2015.

Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin. "Those Who Dared: A Reappraisal of Britain's Special Air Service, 1950–80." International History Review 37.3 (2015): 540–564. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Jan. 2016.

Mortimer, Gavin. "The History of the SAS." History Extra, 26 Oct. 2022, www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/special-air-service-sas-history-david-stirling/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.

Mortimer, Gavin. Stirling’s Men: The Inside Story of the SAS in World War II. London: Cassell, 2007.

Mortimer, Gavin. The SAS in World War II: An Illustrated History. Oxford, UK: Osprey, 2011.

Mortimer, Gavin. "Who Dares Lies." Spectator (00386952) 328.9751 (2015): 24. Business Source Complete. Web. 11 Jan. 2016.

Newsinger, John. Britain’s Counterinsurgency. London: Palgrave, 2015.

Rennie, James. The Operators: On the Street with Britain’s Most Secret Service. Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2014.

Scholey, Pete. Who Dares Wins: Special Forces Heroes of the SAS. Oxford, UK: Osprey, 2008.

Soodalter, Ron. "Crags of Tumbledown." Military History 32.1 (2015): 26–33. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Jan. 2016.