Special Forces History

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.

It takes a tough mindset to be a successful sniper, to be able to dig in for days on your own as you wait for your target, to stay calm on a battlefield when you yourself have become the target the enemy most wants to take out. Craig Harrison has what it takes, and in November 2009 in Afghanistan, under intense pressure, he saved the lives of his comrades with the longest confirmed sniper kill: 2,475 meters. In this unflinching autobiography, Craig catapults us into the heat of the action as he describes his active service in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Best-selling author Patrick Robinson helped Marcus Luttrell bring his harrowing story of survival in Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 to the page and the big screen. But the Afghani man who saved his life was always shrouded in mystery. Now, with The Lion of Sabray, Robinson reveals the amazing backstory of Mohammed Gulab.

Dawn. 19th July 1972. A force of nearly 300 heavily armed, well-trained guerrillas launches a surprise attack on the small fishing village of Mirbat. All that stands in their way is a troop of just nine SAS, aided only by an elite band of fighter pilots overhead. Two years earlier, a Communist rebellion had threatened the Arabian Peninsula, in the strategically critical Sultanate of Oman. Following a covert intelligence mission, 22 SAS deployed their largest ever assault force against the rebels. But this was to be a bitter and hard-fought campaign culminating the Battle of Mirbat.

The SAS was born under the leadership of David Stirling in the Libyan desert in July 1941 often called the ‘Originals.’ Other legends such as Jock Lewes and Paddy Mayne were pivotal in the early success of the SAS rouge heroes. The very first SAS raid ended without a single hit on the enemy, along with 34 men dead, injured or missing; only 21 returned to base. Using their motto ‘Who Dares Wins’ the SAS continued to dare with big losses and small gains. In North Africa, the SAS became a nuisance to the enemy. Many aircraft were shot up and airfields temporarily put out of action. In ...

Spud Ely's SAS career has taken him into some of the most deadly, high-octane, violent battles ever. From the Falklands to the Persian Gulf, he has been in the very centre of the most ferocious fighting scenes modern history has witnessed. Armed to the hilt with the most up-to-date, hi-tech military machinery and his highly-toned fighting skills, Steve is truly a force to be reckoned with. Fighting for Queen and Country is the unputdownable account of his most bloody, violent, heroic moments.

END OF EXISTENCE, the second instalment of the Kirkland Finn military thriller series, tells the story of a female environmentalist who has grown tired of humankind. Written in a cinematic style with relentless action from Hereford in the UK to the wastelands of Russia, Forrest of Finland and Lapland of Sweden, Andy Munro’s END OF EXISTENCE is action-packed fiction from start to end. Follow the adventures of SAS Captain Kirkland Finn and his squad of highly skilled covert operative soldiers as they fight to eliminate a terrorist biological warfare threat with the potential to wipe out ...

In July 1944, the 9,000-man Japanese garrison on the island of Tinian listened warily as the thunder of the United States Navy and Marine Corps, Army and Air Corps, descended on their neighboring island, Saipan, just three miles away. There were 20,000 Japanese troops on Saipan, but the US obliterated the opposition after a horrific all-arms campaign. The sudden silence only indicated it was now Tinian's turn.

Major Tyson Bradford had two mistresses - his family and his career. He loved them both. For the first time, the two were demanding his presence at the same time. All the traditional methods failed to produce the results he needed. An uncommon path of destruction pummeled Tyson's Achilles heel.

From the best-selling author of true military classics Zero Six Bravo, The Nazi Hunters and Churchill's Secret Warriors. In the Spring of 1940, as Britain reeled from defeats on all fronts and America seemed frozen in isolation, one fear united the British and American leaders like no other: the Nazis had stolen a march on the Allies towards building the atomic bomb. So began the hunt for Hitler's nuclear weapons - nothing else came close in terms of priorities.

In the inspiring tradition of Black Hawk Down, this is the riveting real-life story of how an Australian SAS signalman's courage under fire saved more than 80 lives. It is an enthralling eyewitness account of the war on terror. Jock Wallace was pumped. It was the start of Operation Anaconda, the US-led military offensive to flush out al Qaeda and Taliban from their last stronghold in the Shahi Kot Valley in Afghanistan.

Was principled gentleman Winston Churchill also the master of nasty tactics? You bet he was! Winston Churchill had done it all. In the British Army, he had fought in India and Egypt, been under fire, and returned it; he'd killed the enemy. In the Boer War, Churchill was captured, put in a PoW camp, and escaped, surviving behind enemy lines for weeks. He'd invented tanks, floating harbors, grenade launchers; turns out Germans did the worst thing possible... they’d attacked Britain and made Churchill mad. With his back to the wall in 1940, & Nazi invasion imminent, not only did Churchill ...

From the Battle of Yorktown (1781), where a fledgling America learned hard lessons about what kind of military it would need to survive, to Fallujah (2004), which epitomized the dawn of the privatization of war, The Hidden History of America at War takes listeners inside the battlefield, introducing them to key characters and events that will shatter myths, misconceptions, and romanticism, replacing them with rich insight.

Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner, he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head.

Everything you think you know about war is wrong. War is timeless. Some things change - weapons, tactics, leadership - but our desire to go into battle does not. We are in the midst of an age of conflict: global terrorism, Russia's resurgence and China's rise, international criminal empires, climate change and dwindling natural resources. The stakes are high, and we are dangerously unprepared. As a former paratrooper and military contractor, Sean McFate has been on the front lines of deep state conflicts.

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.

In 2014, H was back in Afghanistan, providing security for the Japanese Embassy in Kabul. In 2021, when the chaotic evacuation of the Afghan capital began, it was a tough call for the Japanese government to leave behind their significant investment in Afghanistan’s future. When H finally got the go-ahead to extract the embassy’s diplomats and staff, he was leading the only security team remaining in a city rapidly filling with Taliban fighters.

The ISIS Solution takes a look at the current geopolitical situation, organizational structure of ISIS, and provides new thinking and strategies for dealing with the Islamic State in the Middle East. Its authors and contributors have over 50 years of combined experience in the intelligence, analyst, and Special Operations communities. Leadership and a new philosophical conversation of action is needed to eliminate violent terrorism. This book starts the conversation.

From Afghanistan's Hindu Kush peaks and sunbaked Helmand Valley to Baghdad, Mosul and Ramadi in Iraq, American snipers have braved heart-pounding situations to hit their human targets dead-on. Few military feats stir the imagination like the image of a pair of riflemen waiting quietly in a building, a bomb crater, or a mountain pass for a Taliban or Al Qaeda fighter to walk into their crosshairs. Sniper presents real-life tales from the military's frontline snipers---their hits and their misses, the anguish of loss, and the anxiety of the first kill.

It is the winter of 2001. A terror ship is bound for Britain carrying a horrifying weapon. The British military sends a crack unit of SAS and SBS to assault the vessel before she reaches London. So begins a true story of explosive action as this band of elite warriors pursues the merchants of death from the high seas to the harsh wildlands of Afghanistan. The hunt culminates in the single greatest battle of the Afghan war, the brutal and bloody siege of an ancient mud-walled fortress crammed full of hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban.