In the course of less than a week in 1980, the Special Air Service (SAS), an elite special forces regiment of the British Army, emerged from almost total obscurity to become a household name in the United Kingdom and acquired instant recognition as the world’s leading counter-terrorist unit.
Formed in 1941, in the midst of the World War II, the SAS came into being through the inspiration of Colonel David Stirling, a Scots Guardsman then convalescing in a hospital in Cairo from injuries sustained in a training accident. He envisioned an entirely new kind of unit, one divided into very small sub-units of four men each – of a sort not seen in any other regiment in the Army – where traditional notions of discipline and leadership did not apply. As he wrote years later:
In the SAS each of the four men was trained to a high general level of proficiency in the whole range of SAS capability and, additionally, each man was trained to have at least one special expertise according to his aptitude. In carrying out an operation – often in pitch-dark – each SAS man in each module was exercising his own individual perception and judgement at full stretch. (Geraghty, Who Dares Wins, p. 8)
There was no ‘leader’ of this four-man team, in the traditional sense, whose members bonded like a family, the more so when two men were sometimes required to spend months together, day and night, often in isolation. They were to be completely classless, moulding their identity according to the warrior caste of the regiment and binding themselves together as a family. Stirling described the unit’s philosophy thus:
From the start, the SAS Regiment has had some firmly held tenets from which we never depart. They can be summarised as follows:
1. The unrelenting pursuit of excellence.
2. The maintaining of the highest standards of discipline in all aspects of the daily life of the SAS soldier (Geraghty, Ibid., p. 9)
Stirling, a graduate of Cambridge, had joined a commando unit in 1940. Together with a fellow officer, Jock Lewes, an Oxford graduate from the Welsh Guards, he began to conceive of ways to strike at extended German supply lines in the Western Desert. When a misallocated supply of parachutes came into his possession, Stirling and Lewes, neither of whom were trained to use one, began experimenting. In an accident in which the canopy was shredded by the aircraft tailfin, Stirling descended at high speed to the ground, injuring his back so badly that both his legs were temporarily paralysed. While recovering in hospital, he laid out plans for the creation of a new unit that would penetrate deep behind enemy lines to perform strategic raids without the need for full-scale commando operations normally supported by air or naval units on a large scale. As the Long Range Desert Group was already performing this task in the desert by using vehicles, Stirling proposed a unit composed of saboteurs employing parachutes who could inflict damage on enemy airfields to an extent hitherto only carried out by large numbers of commandos.
With the approval of General Sir Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, the SAS was born. Many examples of derring-do followed in the Western Desert – though not without disastrous consequences in some cases – and the regiment was responsible for destroying hundreds of German aircraft on the ground and large quantities of military supplies and vehicles. Stirling himself was captured in Tunisia, and after several attempts to escape spent the rest of the war in Colditz. By this time the SAS consisted of two regiments, one in North Africa and the other operating in Sicily and along the Italian coast. By 1944 it was brigade-sized and had carried out numerous raids across the Mediterranean theatre. Thereafter it began to operate in occupied France, training and supplying the Resistance, harassing enemy communications by mining roads, blowing up railway lines, ambushing truck convoys and identifying targets suitable for air attack. Similar operations were later carried out in Holland, Denmark and in Germany itself. The two regiments were disbanded in October 1945 but were resurrected the following year.
The SAS remains the smallest corps of the British Army; whereas other elite units have come and gone according to wartime needs, the SAS remains as a permanent unit. It is unique in another way: it has evolved to take on a counter-revolutionary function, operating both at home and abroad, in small numbers and with disproportionate results, as it has demonstrated since 1945 in Malaya, Borneo, Oman, the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The SAS did not have a counter-terrorist mandate until 1973 when the Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW) Wing was formed. Until that time the need for the development of counter-revolutionary training was recognized only as a result of a series of events that highlighted the need for the establishment of some sort of anti-terrorist squad; specifically, one more highly trained than the police and armed with specialist weapons and equipment. Indeed, prior to 1973 the exact role of the SAS in counter-revolutionary warfare had always been a matter of speculation and controversy for those outside the Army, not least because some of its operations had helped perpetuate the rule of undemocratic regimes in various parts of the world, principally in the Commonwealth. The Land Operations Manual (1969), a publication of the Ministry of Defence, spelled out its principal functions:
SAS squadrons are particularly suited, trained and equipped for counter-revolutionary operations. Small parties may be infiltrated or dropped by parachute, including free fall, to avoid a long approach through enemy dominated areas, in order to carry out any of the following tasks:
a. The collection of information on the location and movement of insurgent forces.
b. The ambush and harrassment of insurgents.
c. The infiltration of sabotage, assassination and demolition parties into insurgent held areas.
d. Border surveillance.
e. Limited community relations.
f. Liaison with, and organization, training and control of friendly guerrilla forces operating against the common enemy.
Its low profile and the secret nature of its operations contributed further to perceptions that it was something other than a strictly military formation. In fact, the SAS did not and does not collect intelligence (except for purposes of fulfilling immediate military tasks while on campaign) and is not an arm of SIS (Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6), though informal links exist since intelligence officers occasionally require specialist military training which the SAS can provide. In short, the SAS is a regiment – albeit an extraordinary one – of the British Army, operating on a smaller scale than ordinary regiments, employing four-man patrols or 16-man troops, based at its headquarters near Hereford.
The purely operational role of the SAS began to change when, apart from those operating in Aden in 1967 and Dhofar (a region of south Yemen) in 1970–77, many SAS men were sent abroad to train the bodyguards of foreign heads of state whose death was thought to be adverse to British interests. In order to perform this new function, elements of the SAS began to train in a specially constructed house in which soldiers could practise shooting would-be kidnappers while avoiding hitting the VIP they were trained to protect. Formally known as the Close Quarter Battle (CQB) House, but informally as ‘the Killing House’, it was used to train bodyguards coming from overseas as well. These training schemes led to the creation of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing, but when the SAS became fully committed in Dhofar, the regiment could no longer supply bodyguard training.
An expanded and somewhat ambiguous mandate of the CRW Wing, albeit limited by small numbers, came about as a direct result of the massacre that took place at the Munich Olympics in September 1972. With security relatively lax, a group of seven Palestinian terrorists known as ‘Black September’ was able to seize the dormitory occupied by Israeli athletes, killing two of them and taking nine hostage. The terrorists demanded the release of 200 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. The Israelis flatly refused, but the West German government agreed to allow the gunmen, together with the hostages, safe passage out of the country. Matters unravelled at the airport, however, when German security forces opened fire and, in the fighting that ensued, all nine remaining hostages, five terrorists and one policeman were killed. Hundreds of millions of people watched the event on television, with dire political consequences for the West German government. Full media exposure not only embarrassed the West German authorities, but alerted other governments to the need to establish counter-terrorist units to cope with similar episodes that might arise in the future. In doing so, security organizations discovered that, paradoxically, the public tended to view the government and not the hostage-takers with disapprobation if the crisis ended in violence. This inspired Western governments, meeting at the G-7 summit talks the following year, to reach an agreement to establish forces specifically trained in counter-terrorism – not least because most countries had no military personnel trained to cope with a scenario like that at Munich.
The Germans were, quite naturally, keen to do so as quickly as possible, and established an anti-terrorist squad known at GSG-9. The French followed suit with their version, known as GIGN, the Americans created Delta Force and the British, recognising their own vulnerability to such a threat, decided that, while the Metropolitan Police could be employed for such a task, its skills in this realm were necessarily limited, and therefore took the decision to establish a unit dedicated to counter-terrorism. In 1973, the Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing of the SAS was expanded, with responsibility for serving not merely in its traditional role against insurgents abroad, but as the nation’s hostage-rescue unit. This new task was perfectly logical, for in wartime the regiment had always performed this function. Specifically, in conducting such operations the SAS was trained to infiltrate an area by sea, land or air; gather intelligence about that area and the movement of hostile guerrilla forces; ambush and harass those guerrillas; assassinate and carry out demolition operations; conduct border surveillance; pursue a ‘hearts and minds’ policy; and train and liaise with friendly guerrilla forces. In their new function of hostage-rescue, hijack-busting and the relief of building sieges, they would no longer always wear military uniform, were trained in urban surveillance, close-quarter fighting and high-speed driving, and carried new forms of covert weaponry. Cross-service training also took place, so that when the CRW Wing was first deployed in January 1975 at Stansted Airport in response to an Iranian terrorist takeover of a civilian airliner, the team numbered about 20 men. The hijacker surrendered and was arrested without having inflicted any casualties. In December of the same year, the mere knowledge of the presence of the SAS on the scene was enough to induce two IRA terrorists to surrender themselves and release their two hostages at Balcombe Street, Marylebone, in central London.
The value of the CRW Wing was becoming clear, but its relationship with civilian institutions was not yet firmly established; specifically, the dual presence of police and soldiers on the scene at Balcombe Street first raised the question of who should have operational control. By the time of the embassy siege in 1980, this problem had been resolved through compromise: it was agreed that when a hostage situation was of an exclusively criminal nature, as at the Spaghetti House Restaurant in London in September 1975, the police would remain in complete operational control. Where a stand-off was of a political nature, however – that is, where the hostage-takers sought to coerce the British or any other government for political reasons – then the direction of negotiations and operations would fall to the responsibility of a Downing Street committee known as COBR (Cabinet Office Briefing Room; pronounced ‘cobra’), assembled only in cases of emergency, such as a terrorist threat. The Home Secretary then and now chairs COBR, advised by senior Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office and Foreign Office ministers, and representatives from the Metropolitan Police, MI5 (the security service responsible for domestic counter-intelligence), the SAS and other organizations and bodies. In this way, the SAS has direct access to senior government and police officials, together with operational connections to the police on the scene, who remain in tactical control while negotiations continue or until control is passed to the Ministry of Defence (MOD), with the SAS serving the function of Military Aid to the Civil Power (MACP), which the Army defines as:
The provision of military assistance to the Civil Power [i.e. the government] in the maintenance of law, order and public safety using specialist capabilities or equipment, in situations beyond the capabilities of the Civil Power. Such assistance may be armed, if appropriate. For matters of public safety, support will routinely be given to the Police as the lead organization; this includes specific security operations.
Even during this period the SAS is stringently subject to the rule of law, with the rules of engagement carefully detailed in the tactical operations room established near the scene of the crisis. In this way the SAS plays no role in the negotiating phase of a siege, and thus is a politically neutral force whose sole function is to carry out military operations if these are deemed necessary. Nor is it in the interests of the SAS merely to go in ‘with guns blazing’, for their members are well aware that they could be prosecuted for using excessive force, and that the regiment’s reputation could suffer as a result of the deaths of hostages, whether at the hands of the terrorists or, worse still, at those of the soldiers. In short, public perception that a military operation is heavy-handed could result in a disastrous political situation for the government and a propaganda victory for the terrorists. Much depends, therefore, on the training and equipment of the unit established to thwart hostage-takers.
The SAS had years of training behind it, but no operational experience in handling a hostage-rescue situation. Opportunity arose, however, in October 1977 when two of its members, Major Alastair Morrison and Sergeant Barry Davies, led an assault team from GSG-9 in the rescue of German hostages held by Palestinian terrorists on a Lufthansa airliner in Mogadishu, Somalia. Further operational experience was gained by SAS advisers during the South Moluccan train siege in Holland in the same year. Finally, experience was gained during joint exercises with the American Delta Force and the French special forces unit, GIGN. At the time, the SAS CRW team was little more than 20-strong, but the Callaghan government, appreciating the success achieved in the Mogadishu raid, authorized a substantial increase to the CRW force and additional funds for improved equipment, including weapons and communications.
Thereafter, each SAS squadron trained in a CRW role on a rotating basis, between tours in Northern Ireland and training missions abroad. The permanent CRW wing would train all other SAS men, with the Special Projects (SP) Team carrying out siege-busting exercises, generally with a new scenario on each occasion, followed by a lengthy debriefing, known as a ‘wash-up’. Once its training was complete, the same squadron would remain on standby and assist the next squadron’s retraining in carrying out CRW exercises. This method of instruction proved its worth only two years later, when it was discovered at the Iranian Embassy siege that the entire squadron (approximately 80 men), consisting of two teams – Red and Blue, on 24-hour standby – was required for this substantial task, whereas the original team of 20 could not have coped with the situation. Thus, by 1980, the SAS had evolved to play a role that no other institution in Britain could fulfil, including the police. By the time of the embassy siege in 1980, the SP Team had had seven years in which to prepare for just such an eventuality; indeed, the sort of scenario for which they had tirelessly trained very closely matched that which they actually faced.
In the course of their training the SAS established a hostage scenario in which the basic features remain the same, apart from the type of location. First, the terrorists seize hostages and hold them in a building, an aircraft, a train, a bus or aboard a ship. Second, the police surround the location and begin to negotiate, offering small concessions – such as media coverage of the terrorists’ demands – as a substitute for actually meeting those demands. Implicit in such a scenario is the notion that terrorism is, at its heart, psychological warfare in which public opinion can be shaped, and that security forces do not use what may popularly be perceived as excessive force lest a victory go to the terrorists. Moreover, the authorities must remain aware that the situation may be complicated by the fact that the terrorists’ demands may not be directed at the British government, but rather at a foreign one, thus drastically limiting Whitehall’s degree of influence over the situation. Next, with communications reaching deadlock, the terrorists threaten to kill a hostage; later, shots are fired by the terrorists inside their position, and the body of a hostage is produced as evidence of their resolve to achieve their aims. The terrorists then issue a timetable of executions, which in turn finally triggers the SAS assault.
The Prime Minister standing outside the Killing House with members of the SP Team, having just watched a demonstration of room combat and hostage rescue.
At SAS headquarters in Hereford all members of the regiment’s Sabre (combat) Squadrons took part in a close-quarter battle (CQB) course, part of which involved training in the six-room ‘Killing House’, where hostage-rescue skills could be practised and refined. The main purpose of this training was to develop fine-tuned skills in entering a terrorist-held structure by a variety of means and, once inside, to distinguish instantly between terrorist and hostage, a situation made even more complex if a terrorist pretends to be a hostage. The ‘Killing House’, complete with furniture, contained standard NATO paper targets in the form of Russian soldiers representing terrorists, and others representing hostages, which were moved from place to place. The SP Team was divided into two specialist groups: the assault group, which stormed the building; and the perimeter containment group, which played the role of snipers who circled the scene and prevented anyone leaving (or entering), not only at ground level, but by way of the sewers or over the roofs. Assault groups usually operated in pairs, bursting into a room, instantly firing two pistol rounds (known as a ‘double tap’) or short, controlled bursts of automatic fire into each terrorist, aiming for the head, without injuring other SAS men or the hostages. Each two-man team was assigned a specific room to clear, with each man issued with explicit instructions about the direction in which he directed his fire so that, once a room was cleared and the next team came through, the likelihood of firing on colleagues was greatly reduced. If hit, a soldier was to wait for a medic to assist him when the operation was over.
The basic rule in assault is that laid out by Paddy Mayne, one of the founders of the SAS: ‘When you enter a room full of armed men, shoot the first person who makes a move, hostile or otherwise. He has started to think and is therefore dangerous…’ Some targets were of kneeling figures, sometimes arrayed behind furniture. Once perforated, patches and glue were applied over the bullet holes so the targets could be reused. Every man was regularly trained with live ammunition in order to hone his skills and reflexes in action so that if a terrorist uses a hostage as a shield, the SAS man can shoot the terrorist in the head without harm being done to the hostage. The SAS man must exhibit lightning reflexes and the ability to shoot accurately while running, crouching or rolling across the floor.
A member of the regiment described the kind of drills conducted at the time of the embassy siege:
Inside the ‘Killing House’ live ball ammunition is used all the time, though the walls have a special rubber coating which absorbs the impact of rounds as they hit. Before going into any hostage scene or other scenario, the team always goes through the potential risks they may face. The priority is always to eliminate the immediate threat. If you burst into a room and there are three terrorists – one with a knife, one holding a grenade and one pointing a machine gun – you always shoot the one with the gun, as he or she is the immediate threat.
The aim is to double tap the target until he drops. Only head shots count – in a room that can sometimes be filled with smoke there is no room for mistakes. Hits to the arms, legs and body will be discounted, and constant drills are required to ensure shooting standards are high. If the front man of the team has a problem with his primary weapon, which is usually a Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun, he will hold it to his left, drop down on one knee and draw his handgun. The man behind him will then stand over him until the problem with the defective weapon has been rectified. Then the point man will tap his mate’s weapon or shout ‘close’, indicating that he is ready to continue with the assault. Two magazines are usually carried on the weapon, but magnetic clips are used as opposed to tape. Though most of the time only one mag is required, having two together is useful because the additional weight can stop the weapon pulling into the air when firing.
The aim is to slowly polish your skills as a team so that everyone is trained up to the same level, thinking on the same wave length and [being] aware of each other’s actions. The ‘House’ is full of corridors, small rooms and obstacles, and often the scenario demands that the rescue be carried out in darkness (a basic SOP [standard operating procedure] on a live mission is for the power to be cut before the team goes into a building). The rooms are pretty barren, but they can be laid out to resemble the size and layout of a potential target, and the hostages will often be mixed in among the gunmen. Confidence in using live ammunition is developed by using ‘live’ hostages, who are drawn from the teams (the men wear body armour but no helmets). They usually sit at a table or stand on a marked spot, waiting to be ‘rescued’. The CQB range also includes electronically operated figures that can be controlled by the training staff. At a basic level, for example, three figures will have their backs to you as you enter the room. Suddenly, all three will turn and one will be armed. In that split second you must make the right assessment and target the correct ‘body’ – if you don’t you will ‘kill’ a hostage and the gunman will ‘kill’ you.
A variety of situations can be developed by the instructors. For example, they may tell the team leaders to stand down minutes before a rescue drill starts, forcing the team members to go through on their own. Other ‘funnies’ include smoke, gas, obstacles to separate team members from their colleagues, as well as loudspeakers to simulate crowd noises and shouting. (Crawford, The SAS at Close Quarters, pp. 66–68)
Apart from sub-machine guns and automatic pistols, shotguns, such as the Remington 870 pump-action model, were used to blow off door hinges and locks, though in exercises blanks were used for this purpose. An SAS soldier also had at his disposal a specially designed grenade, the G60 ‘flash-bang’, consisting of mercury and magnesium powder, designed to blind and deafen an opponent for a few seconds – long enough to enable the SAS man to shoot him before he recovered from the effect. The weapon had first been used operationally at Mogadishu three years before. Each man also carried a personal radio with built-in microphones in the form of a headset so that the operation could be controlled and co-ordinated even amidst the smoke, darkness and noise. SAS men were also trained in abseiling – one aspect of their mountain training programme – which could be applied to hostage situations, and in the use of explosives, in order to blast their way into locked or fortified buildings. SAS teams also carried assault ladders consisting of differing widths to suit particular operational needs in a siege situation. These were black, custom-made in single or multi-sectional and extending types, fashioned from heavy-duty aluminium alloy with rungs deeply serrated, fitted with non-slip rubber feet and covered in noise-reducing buffers on all exposed sides. Such ladders allowed silent climbing for scaling walls as well as rapid access to buildings, vehicles, ships, aircraft, trains and buses.
The Special Projects Team was also equipped with specialized motor vehicles and aircraft, with which they could deploy themselves and their equipment anywhere in Britain. Other specialized equipment could be used to determine the location of hostages and gunmen inside a building: rooms could be scanned from the outside with a thermal imager, and fibre-optic equipment could be threaded into a room from an adjoining room, for instance, to view events without the occupants’ knowledge. The SP Team could also potentially overhear conversations on various types of listening devices and thus, possibly, fix the positions of the hostage-takers. Whatever the scenario and equipment required, the SP Team was, and remains to this day, on continuous and immediate standby – with each trooper carrying a bleeper and a holdall packed with assault gear.
WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
1 Assault suit
2 Body armour
3 Assault belt rig
4 Regimental cap badge
5 Respirator
6 Stun grenade (‘flash bang’)
7 Browning 9mm high-power pistol, clip and ammunition
8 Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun, clips and ammunition
Weight: 2.55 kg (4.4 lb)
Calibre: 9mm x 19 Parabellum
Muzzle velocity: 400m (436 yards) per second
Magazine capacity: 15- or 30- round, box
Rate of fire: 650 rpm
9 Remington 870 pump action shotgun