SAS Zero Hour: The Secret Origins of the Special Air Service

by Tim Jones, Rannulph Fiennes (Contribution by)

Overview

The historian and author of Postwar Counterinsurgency and the SAS reveals the full story of how the Special Air Service Regiment began during WWII.

Britain’s elite Special Air Service Regiment is one of the most revered special-ops units in the world. Its high-profile operations include the storming of the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980 and the hunt for Osama bin Laden in southern Afghanistan following 9/11. Since its inception during the Second World War, the SAS has become a byword for the highest possible standards in both conventional and unorthodox methods of warfare.

In SAS Zero Hour, military historian and SAS expert Tim Jones offers fascinating new insight into how this elite regiment began. It is commonly held that the unit was the brainchild of just one man, David Stirling. While not dismissing Stirling’s considerable contribution, Jones’s historical investigation reveals many other factors that played a part in shaping the SAS, including the roles of military deception specialist Dudley Clarke, Field Marshals Archibald Wavell and Claude Auchinleck, and others.

Drawing extensively on primary sources, as well as reassessing the more recent regimental histories and memoirs, SAS Zero Hour is “The most comprehensive and enlightening version of these seminal events yet” (Sir Ranulph Fiennes, from the Forward).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526713544
Publisher:	Pen & Sword Books Limited
Publication date:	01/31/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Tom Jones is the author of two other books on the SAS, including Post-War Counterinsurgency and the SAS, 1945-1952: A Special Kind of Warfare and SAS, the First Secret Wars: The Unknown Years of Combat and Counter-Insurgency

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations 9

Foreword 11

Preface: SAS The Untold Story 13

Acknowledgements 21

List of Abbreviations 23

Chapter 1 The Legend and the Man 27

Chapter 2 Stalin's War 41

Chapter 3 The Independent Companies 48

Chapter 4 The Kommandos 57

Chapter 5 The Desert Raiders 66

Chapter 6 Striking Back: Europe 81

Chapter 7 Target: Fortress Europe 88

Chapter 8 Striking Back: The Middle East 111

Chapter 9 Bardia or Bust 148

Chapter 10 Searching for a Role 159

Chapter 11 The Originals 186

Chapter 12 The First Raids 197

Chapter 13 The Godfathers of the Regiment 207

Notes 211

Bibliography 231

Index 238