Special Forces History

Rising Tide Car Wash in Parkland, Florida, isn’t average in any way. When Tom D’Eri and his father John bought the location in 2013, it was struggling. Now it’s one of the highest-volume washes in Florida. Its employee retention rate is five times that of its competitors. It has spun off into two additional locations that have been immediately successful, and the business is absurdly profitable.

Told through the eyes of current and former Navy SEALs, Eyes on Target is an inside account of some of the most harrowing missions in American history-including the mission to kill Osama bin Laden and the mission that wasn't, the deadly attack on the US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi where a retired SEAL sniper with a small team held off one hundred terrorists while his repeated radio calls for help went unheeded.

Peter Ratcliffe served in the SAS for 25 years. Blooded in Oman in the 1970s, he also saw action in Northern Ireland, in the Falklands War, and in the Gulf campaign. From his early days in the Paras to his time as Regimental Sergeant-Major in the Gulf, he has lived and fought by the motto 'who dares wins'. Eye of the Storm is his insider's account of that exceptional career.

As part of an elite special operations unit at the fighting edge of the Global War on Terrorism, Nicholas Moore spent over a decade with the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. In this compelling biography, a detailed narrative of grueling life on the ground combines with accounts of some of the most dramatic search and rescue operations of the period to tell the true story of life on the line in the War on Terror.

Havoc-06 is the call sign of former Australian Combat Controller Troy Knight. As a Royal Australian Air Force Airfield Defence Guard, Troy had not found the military adventure he sought: combat operations. His thirst for overseas deployment saw him privately contract his services in Iraq and South East Asia, but when he got whiff that the Australian Defence Force was raising a new defence capability, he couldn’t help but want to be part of it.

The unforgiving Afghan winter settled upon the 22 men of Marine Special Operations Team 8222, call sign Dagger 22, in the remote and hostile river valley of Bala Murghab, Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters in the region would have liked nothing more than to once again go dormant and rest until the new spring fighting season began. No chance of that - this winter would be different.

In 1993 Lieutenant James Lechner, a member of the 3rd Ranger Battalion, was selected for a top secret special operations task force being sent to Mogadishu, Somalia, to capture the insurgent leader Mohamed Farah Aideed. In early October, after weeks on the ground and conducting a number of raids in the city, the Task Force is called upon to conduct a daylight mission into the heart of Aideed’s territory. During the raid, following the initial dangerous fast rope insertion and subsequent capture of a group of Aideed’s lieutenants, one of the Task Force Black Hawk helicopters is shot down.

It was the deadliest terror campaign ever mounted against a nation in modern times: the al-Aqsa, or Second, Intifada. This is the untold story of how Israel fought back with an elite force of undercover operatives drawn from the nation's diverse backgrounds and ethnicities - and united in their ability to walk among the enemy as no one else dared.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, two of bin Laden’s key lieutenants: the masterminds behind the attacks of September 11. Based on the only interview these masterminds of terror ever gave to the media as well as extensive follow-up research, Capture or Kill may be the closest we will get to the full inside story of the plot.

The Parachute Regiment is Britain's elite airborne infantry. On the 80th anniversary of their first crucial campaign, in Operation Torch in North Africa, historian and broadcaster Mark Urban combines perspectives from German and British sources to tell the gripping stories of the men who had the resilience, fitness and self-reliance to be "Red Devils"—the name they were given by their German enemies.

In April of 1972, near the end of the Vietnam War, SEAL Lieutenant Tom Norris performed an unprecedented ground rescue of two American airmen who were shot down behind enemy lines in North Vietnam, a feat for which he would be awarded the Medal of Honor. Just six months later, Norris was sent on a dangerous special reconnaissance mission that would take his team deep into enemy territory. In the running gun battle that ensued, Lieutenant Norris was severely wounded; a bullet entered his left eye and exited the left side of his head.

The 75th Ranger Regiment is a unique and distinct culture among the American military establishment. They stand alone, even among our other Special Operations forces, as the most active brigade-sized force in the current Global War on Terrorism. Since 9/11, the Regiment has been the only continuously engaged unit in the Army, and has had 40 percent of its number deployed in harm's way for the last decade. Their mission is unique. Rangers do not patrol, they don't train allied forces, nor do they engage in routine counterinsurgency duties. They have a single-mission focus.

Retired Marine sniper Jack Coughlin and John Bruning pull back the curtain of secrecy to take an insider's look at the dark and misunderstood world of America's sniper force. Long considered the redheaded stepchildren of the infantry, snipers have been loathed by their fellow warriors, called "ten cent killers" by our media, and portrayed as unbalanced psychopaths by Hollywood.

In crisp prose and sharp detail, Darling offers a moment-by-moment account of a one-day mission to track down and kill Taliban insurgents in the Zabul Province of southeastern Afghanistan. A rare day-in-the-life narrative that captures the mundane realities of deployment - the waiting, the heat, the heavy gear, the 0345 wake-up - along with the high-octane experience of crossing foreign terrain where every turn, every decision might have life or death consequences.

On 28 May 1982, 450 men of the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment—2 Para—went into action to retake the settlement of Goose Green on East Falkland, where more than 1,000 Argentine soldiers were holding 119 Falkland Islanders—men, women, children and one baby—in squalid conditions. Forty years on, Goose Green is still the biggest and bloodiest battle the British Army has fought in modern times. This book is the living narrative of the battle told by the very men who fought it.

In mid-2017, whispers from Australia's most secretive and elite military unit reached Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick McKenzie. McKenzie and veteran reporter Chris Masters began an investigation that would not only reveal shocking information about Australia's most famous and revered SAS soldier but plunge the two reporters into the defamation trial of the century.

Established after World War I by the Royal Australian Navy, the Coast Watchers were a loose organisation of several hundred European settlers, missionaries, patrol officers and planters living in British and Australian Pacific Island territories whose job it was to observe and report on the enemy. They were mostly all unpaid volunteers whose job it was simply to observe and report on foreign shipping and aeroplane movements. It was never envisaged that the Coast Watchers would do any fighting, nor operate inside enemy-occupied territory.

Few outside the security services have heard of 14 Company. As deadly as the SAS yet more secret, the operators of 14 Company are Britain's most effective weapon against international terrorism. For every bomb that goes off, 14 Company prevent 12. The selection process is the most physically, intellectually, and emotionally demanding anywhere in the world. This is the true story of one operator and of some of the most hair-raising military operations ever conducted on the streets of Britain.

Instead of being trained to fight, the few soldiers each year selected for Talpiot are taught how to think. In order to join this unit they have to commit to being in the army for 10 years, rather than the three years a normal soldier serves. Talpiots are taught advanced level physics, math, and computer science as they train with soldiers from every other branch of the IDF. The result: young men and women become research and development machines.

Of the 18 months required to become a Navy SEAL, one week will cause over half of the trainees to quit ("ring the bell"). Only the toughest make it through. In Hell Week and Beyond, Scott McEwen takes the listeners to the sands of Coronado Beach in San Diego, where Navy SEALs are put through the most grueling training known to mankind. Grit, commitment, heart, and soul are needed to become a SEAL, because these are the elite forces who go into the toughest battles for America.