Special Forces History

On a scorching September day in 1942, the Special Air Service (SAS), a special forces unit of the British Army, pulled off one of the most daring, top-secret ruses of the Second World War. The plan (sanctioned by Churchill): cover a grueling 2,000 miles of the Sahara desert to attack German general Erwin Rommel's seemingly impregnable port fortress in North Africa from the rear to break free and arm more than 30,000 Allied POWs.

The OSS - Office of Strategic Services - created under the command of William Donovan, has been celebrated for its cloak-and-dagger operations during World War II and as the precursor of the CIA. As the "Oh So Social", it has also been portrayed as a club for the well-connected before, during, and after the war.

Special Forces soldiers are daring, seasoned troops from America's heartland, selected in a tough competition and trained in an extraordinary range of skills. They know foreign languages and cultures and unconventional warfare better than any US fighters, and while they prefer to stay out of the limelight, veteran war correspondent Linda Robinson gained access to their closed world. She traveled with them on the frontlines, interviewed them at length on their home bases, and studied their doctrine, methods, and history.

January 1991: IRAQ. Eight members of the SAS regiment embark upon a top-secret mission to infiltrate deep behind enemy lines. Under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab, they are to sever a vital underground communication link and to seek and destroy mobile Scud launchers. Their call sign: BRAVO TWO ZERO. Each laden with 15 stones of equipment, they tab 20km across the desert to reach their objective. But within days, their location is compromised. After a fierce fire fight, they are forced into evasive action. Four men are captured. Three die. Only one escapes.

In 1676, a ninja named Fujibayashi collected and combined information from the ninja clans of Iga—regarded to be the homeland of the ninja—and compiled it into an authoritative book. Known as The Bansenhukai, Fujibayashi's book has now been translated into English by the Historical Ninjutsu Research Team and is widely considered to be the "bible" of ninjutsu, the arts of the ninja.

Putin's Wars is a timely overview of the conflicts in which Russia has been involved since Vladimir Putin became prime minister and then president of Russia, from the First Chechen War to the two military incursions into Georgia, the annexation of Crimea and the eventual invasion of Ukraine itself. But it also looks more broadly at Putin's recreation of Russian military power and its expansion to include a range of new capabilities, from mercenaries to operatives in a relentless information war against Western powers.

Even by the standards of the 1970s, even compared to Jar-Jar Binks, the legendary 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special is a peerlessly cringeworthy pop-culture artifact.

No publicity, no media. We move in silently, do our job, and melt away into the background. If you have the stamina, the willpower and the guts, we'll welcome you with open arms and make you one of us. And if you haven't, then it's been very nice knowing you. Eighteen years in the SAS saw Pete Winner, codenamed Soldier 'I', survive the savage battle of Mirbat, parachute into the icy depths of the South Atlantic at the height of the Falklands War and storm the Iranian Embassy during the most famous hostage crisis in the modern world.

In April 2021, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message was clear: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos; he passed through Fort Bragg’s legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan’s government and army were on the edge of collapse, and Nezam was receiving threatening texts from the Taliban.

There are special forces. There are US Navy SEALs. There is the select and secretive group of highly trained operators known as SEAL Team Six or MOB VI as they like to call it. And then there is Justin Sheffield. When it comes to talking about the most experienced, effective, and deadly warriors in the world, Sheffield is part of an exclusive group that can be counted on one hand. This audiobook is uncompromising, raw, violent, and real.

In Mossad, authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions in the agency's 60-year history.

In the bleak moments after defeat on mainland Europe in winter 1939, Winston Churchill knew that Britain had to strike back hard. So Britain's wartime leader called for the lightning development of a completely new kind of warfare, recruiting a band of eccentric free-thinking warriors to become the first 'deniable' secret operatives to strike behind enemy lines, offering these volunteers nothing but the potential for glory and all-but-certain death.

It is 2012 and in Northern Afghanistan, an international crisis has erupted. A group of NGO workers have been kidnapped by local insurgents and are now hidden in a winding mountain region. After attempts to negotiate a deal with the bandits fail, and with the lives of the hostages hanging in the balance, there is only one option... SAS and Navy SEALs are sent in to find and free them. The Rescue is the action-packed story of their attempts to save the hostages from almost certain death.

Operation Certain Death chronicles the story of the single most daring Special Forces operation since World War Two - Operation Barras; the attempted rescue by the SAS of the British Forces who were being held captive by guerrilla gang the West Side Boys in the Sierra Leone jungle. Operation Barras, the rescue mission, was a combined force of 100 Paras, twelve members of the Special Boat Squadron, helicopters from the Navy and RAF and, spearheading the operation, 40-strong D squadron of the SAS. Against amazing odds the hostages were rescued - over 150 of the enemy were killed.

Major Richard J. "Dick" Meadows is renowned in military circles as a key figure in the development of the U.S. Army Special Operations. A highly decorated war veteran of the engagements in Korea and Vietnam, Meadows was instrumental in the founding of the U.S. Delta Force and hostage rescue force. Although he officially retired in 1977, Meadows could never leave the army behind, and he went undercover in the clandestine operations to free American hostages from Iran in 1980.

Che Guevara was a threat to American foreign policy - and when he turned his attention to Bolivia in 1967, the Pentagon made a decision: Che had to be eliminated. Hunting Che follows the exploits of Major Ralph "Pappy" Shelton, Felix Rodriguez, and Gary Prado - the Bolivian Ranger commander who ultimately captured him. With the White House and the Pentagon secretly monitoring every move, Shelton and his team changed history.

"That Others May Live" is a mantra that defines the fearless men of Alaska's 212th Pararescue Unit, the PJs, one of the most elite military forces on the planet. Whether they are rescuing citizens injured and freezing in the Alaskan wilderness or saving wounded Rangers and SEALs in blazing firefights at war, the PJs are the least known and most highly trained of America's warriors. Never Quit is the true story of how Jimmy Settle, an Alaskan shoe-store clerk, became a Special Forces Operator and war hero.

From Brandon Webb, Navy SEAL sniper and New York Times best-selling author, comes his account of the eight friends and fellow SEALs who made the ultimate sacrifice. As a Navy SEAL, Webb rose to the top of the world's most elite sniper corps, experiencing years of punishing training and combat missions from the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan. Along the way, Webb served beside, trained, and supported men he came to know not just as fellow warriors, but as friends and, eventually, as heroes.

In a top-secret U.S. military experiment, the author was asked to teach Eastern awareness disciplines ranging from aikido to meditation to a group of twenty-five Green Berets. This account chronicles his experiences in the training program and his attempts to revive traditional warriorship in a technological society. In Search of the Warrior Spirit explores the nature of war, the meaning of masculinity, and the need for moral values in the military.

The Civil War is most remembered for the grand battles that have come to define it: Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, among others. However, as bestselling author Patrick K. O’Donnell reveals in The Unvanquished, a vital shadow war raged amid and away from the major battlefields that was in many ways equally consequential to the conflict’s outcome.