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Author: Gavin Mortimer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472804813
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
A gripping history of Britain's Special Boat Squadron in World War II, drawing on veteran interviews and including rare photographs from the SAS Regimental Association. The Special Boat Squadron was Britain's most exclusive Special Forces unit during World War II, and yet its exploits have been largely forgotten. This book tells its story. Highly trained, totally secretive and utterly ruthless, the SBS was established as an entity in its own right in early 1943. Unlike its sister unit, which numbered more than 1,000 men, the SBS never comprised more than 100. Led by men such as the famed Victoria Cross recipient Anders Lassen, the SBS went from island to island in the Mediterranean, landing in the dead of night in small fishing boats and launching savage hit and run raids on the Germans. Through unrivalled access to the archives of the SAS Regimental Association and interviews with the surviving members of the unit, Gavin Mortimer has pieced together the dramatic feats of this elite fighting force. In this new and updated paperback edition, featuring additional content including new text and photographs, the unit and its members are finally granted the recognition that they so richly deserve.
Author: Gavin Mortimer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472804813
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Get Book Here
Book Description
A gripping history of Britain's Special Boat Squadron in World War II, drawing on veteran interviews and including rare photographs from the SAS Regimental Association. The Special Boat Squadron was Britain's most exclusive Special Forces unit during World War II, and yet its exploits have been largely forgotten. This book tells its story. Highly trained, totally secretive and utterly ruthless, the SBS was established as an entity in its own right in early 1943. Unlike its sister unit, which numbered more than 1,000 men, the SBS never comprised more than 100. Led by men such as the famed Victoria Cross recipient Anders Lassen, the SBS went from island to island in the Mediterranean, landing in the dead of night in small fishing boats and launching savage hit and run raids on the Germans. Through unrivalled access to the archives of the SAS Regimental Association and interviews with the surviving members of the unit, Gavin Mortimer has pieced together the dramatic feats of this elite fighting force. In this new and updated paperback edition, featuring additional content including new text and photographs, the unit and its members are finally granted the recognition that they so richly deserve.
Author: John Lodwick
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 9781784383459
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The Special Boat Service (SBS) was a small force during World War II, never more than about 300 men. But that did not stop it from inflicting great damage on the enemy. In the Mediterranean arena and in the Aegean, which the Germans controlled after the fall of Greece and Crete, this small commando force kept up a constant campaign of harassment, thus pinning down enemy forces and preventing their joining other fronts. John Lodwick took part in the SBS Mediterranean campaign and writes from personal experience with the panache and verve of the squadron itself.
Author: Andrew L. Hargreaves
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806151250
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
British and American commanders first used modern special forces in support of conventional military operations during World War II. Since then, although special ops have featured prominently in popular culture and media coverage of wars, the academic study of irregular warfare has remained as elusive as the practitioners of special operations themselves. This book is the first comprehensive study of the development, application, and value of Anglo-American commando and special forces units during the Second World War. Special forces are intensively trained, specially selected military units performing unconventional and often high-risk missions. In this book, Andrew L. Hargreaves not only describes tactics and operations but also outlines the distinctions between commandos and special forces, traces their evolution during the war, explains how the Anglo-American alliance functioned in the creation and use of these units, looks at their command and control arrangements, evaluates their impact, and assesses their cost-effectiveness. The first real impetus for the creation of British specialist formations came in the desperate summer of 1940 when, having been pushed out of Europe following defeat in France and the Low Countries, Britain began to turn to irregular forces in an effort to wrest back the strategic initiative from the enemy. The development of special forces by the United States was also a direct consequence of defeat. After Pearl Harbor, Hargreaves shows, the Americans found themselves in much the same position as Britain had been in 1940: shocked, outnumbered, and conventionally defeated, they were unable to come to grips with the enemy on a large scale. By the end of the war, a variety of these units had overcome a multitude of evolutionary hurdles and made valuable contributions to practically every theater of operation. In describing how Britain and the United States worked independently and cooperatively to invent and put into practice a fundamentally new way of waging war, this book demonstrates the two nations’ flexibility, adaptability, and ability to innovate during World War II.
Author: Gavin Mortimer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472808762
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
A gripping history of the SAS in World War II, supported by a collection of rare images from the SAS Regimental Association. The SAS are among the best-trained and most effective Special Forces units in existence. This book is the incredible story of their origins, told in their own words. During the summer of 1941, a young Scots Guard officer called David Stirling persuaded MEHQ to give its backing to a small band of 60 men christened 'L Detachment'. With a wealth of stunning photographs, many from the SAS Regimental Association, the book captures the danger and excitement of the initial SAS raids against Axis airfields during the Desert War, the battles in Italy and those following the D-Day landings, as well as the dramatic final push into Germany itself and the discovery of such Nazi horrors as Belsen. An exhaustive account of an elite organization's formative years, The SAS in World War II is the fruit of Gavin Mortimer's expertise and his unprecedented access to the archives of the SAS Regimental Association. Incorporating interviews with the surviving veterans, it is the definitive account of the regiment's glorious achievements in the years from 1941 to 1945.
Author: Gavin Mortimer
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group USA
ISBN: 1610589025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
A critically acclaimed historian reveals the heroism and perseverance of a US Army special ops unit during one of the most overlooked campaigns of WWII. In August of 1943, a call went out for American soldiers willing to embark on a “hazardous and dangerous mission” behind enemy lines in Burma. The war department wanted 3,000 volunteers, and it didn’t care who they were; they would be expendable, with an expected casualty rate of eighty-five percent. The men who took up the challenge were, in the words of one, “bums and cast-offs” with rap sheets and reputations for trouble. One war reporter described them as “Dead End Kids,” but by the end of their five-month mission, those that remained had become the legendary “Merrill’s Marauders.” From award-winning historian Gavin Mortimer, Merrill’s Marauders is the story of the American World War II special forces unit originally codenamed “Galahad,” which, in 1944, fought its way through 700 miles of snake-infested Burmese jungle—what Winston Churchill described as “the most forbidding fighting country imaginable.” Though their mission to disrupt Japanese supply lines and communications was ultimately successful, paving the way for the Allied conquest of Burma, the Marauders paid a terrible price for their victory. By the time they captured the crucial airfield of Myitkyina in May 1944, only 200 of the original 3,000 men remained; the rest were dead, wounded, or riddled with disease. This is the definitive nonfiction narrative of arguably the most extraordinary, but also unsung, American special forces unit in World War II.
Author: Barrie Pitt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781718075863
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
Not by strength but by guile. Only since the Falklands campaign have the initials SBS become known to the public. Yet this clandestine formation of Britain's armed forces has been in existence since the Second World War. Barrie Pitt, who himself served with the SBS, describes how the it came into being in 1941. How they fought with distinction in the Aegean, where one of their exploits inspired The Guns of Navarone. How they earned rapport in the Adriatic, in Greece and in Italy. How the SBS was reorganised in 1946 as part of the Royal Marines and has since played a role in Korea, Borneo and the Falklands. Equally interesting is the author's report of the training and specialized skills required by the boat units, and the essential tasks facing them -- infiltration from the sea, reconnaissance, sabotage, survival, resistance to interrogation, escape from captivity -- and the expertise and determination to complete them. As Barrie Pitt's superb account of the formative years of this elite force shows, these qualities have been present from the very beginning. Barrie Pitt (1918-2006) was well known as a military historian and editor of Purnell's History of the Second World War and History of the First World War. His publications include 'Coronel and Falkland', 'Churchill and the Generals' and 'The Crucible of War', a trilogy covering the North African campaign of the Second World War. He was born in Galway and later lived near Ilminster in Somerset.
Author: Gavin Mortimer
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 1472134567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485
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Book Description
Aristocrat, gambler, innovator and special forces legend, the life of David Stirling should need no retelling. His formation of the Special Air Service in the summer of 1941 led to a new form of warfare and Stirling is remembered as the father of special forces soldiering. But was he really a military genius or in fact a shameless self-publicist who manipulated people, and the truth, for this own ends? In this gripping and controversial biography Gavin Mortimer analyses Stirling's complex character: the childhood speech impediment that shaped his formative years, the pressure from his overbearing mother, his fraught relationship with his brother, Bill, and the jealousy and inferiority he felt in the presence of his SAS second-in-command, the cold-blooded killer Paddy Mayne. Stirling lived until old age, receiving a knighthood and plaudits from military forces around the world before his death in 1990. Yet as Mortimer dazzlingly shows, while Stirling was instrumental in selling the SAS to Churchill and senior officers, it was Mayne who really carried the regiment in the early days. Stirling was at best an incompetent soldier and at worst a foolhardy one, who jeopardised his men's live with careless talk and hare-brained missions. Drawing on interviews with SAS veterans who fought with Stirling and men who worked with him on his post-war projects, and examining recently declassified governments files about Stirling's involvement in Aden, Libya and GB75, Mortimer's riveting biography is incisive, bold, honest and written with his customary narrative panache. Impeccably researched and with the courage to challenge the mythical SAS 'brand', Mortimer brings to bear his unparalleled expertise as WW2's premier special forces historian to dig beneath the legend and reveal the real David Stirling, a man who dared and deceived.
Author: Thomas Harder
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526787520
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 542
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Book Description
Until the German occupation of his native Denmark in April 1940 Anders Lassen had no interest in the War. Yet over the next five years he became a highly decorated Special Forces legend and the only non-Commonwealth recipient of the Victoria Cross. After taking part in a mutiny on board a Danish ship, he made his way to Scotland. He first joined the Special Operations Executive before serving with the Small Scale Raiding Force, Special Air Service and Special Boat Service. He took part in the daring Operation Postmaster, off West Africa, and raided the Channel Islands and the Normandy coast. He saw most action in Eastern Mediterranean, fighting in Crete, the Dodecanese, Yugoslavia, mainland Greece and finally Italy. In April 1945, now a major aged 24, he was killed at Lake Comacchio, where his gallantry earned him his posthumous VC. This superb biography is not just a worthy tribute to an outstanding soldier, but a superb account of the numerous special force operations Anders was involved in.
Author: Gavin Mortimer
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9780304367061
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
The first ever officially sanctioned history of the SAS in World War II A riveting history book that reads like a novel, STIRLING'S MEN investigates the story of the SAS from its creation by David Stirling to the last battles of World War II. This is the first account of the SAS to be officially supported by the veterans and based on their unique first-hand testimony. Gavin Mortimer weaves their stories together to produce a fabulous page-turning narrative that will capture the imagination.
Author: John Parker
Publisher: Headline
ISBN: 1472202651
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269
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Book Description
The men of the SBS are the maritime equivalent of their counterparts in the SAS; they are the elite of the British Special Forces and also the most secretive. Although SAS activity has been extensively documented, the SBS has remained in the state it prefers - a shadowy silhouette, with identities protected and missions kept from public view. Formed during the Second World War, when they took part in many daring raids (one of which was filmed as The Cockleshell Heroes), they were active in the jungle campaigns in the Far East, in the Falklands, the Gulf War and Bosnia. Since this seminal book was published in 1997, John Parker has been privy to much more inside information about the SBS's original operations and he brings the book right up to date with accounts of their exploits in East Timor, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and most recently in Iraq.
