In 1941, a young officer lying in a hospital bed in Egypt wrote a proposal almost nobody wanted to read. Its first mission was a disaster: 55 men jumped into a storm, and only 21 came back.
This is the story of how the British SAS was created, disbanded, reborn in the jungles of Malaya, and made famous in seventeen minutes on live television.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Princes Gate, 1980
0:56 Part I – The Idea
3:57 Part II – Kabrit
4:42 Part III – Operation Squatter
5:44 Part IV – The Desert Raiders
8:27 Part V – Disbanded
9:05 Part VI – The Jungle
10:17 Part VII – Mirbat
11:14 Part VIII – Selection
12:32 Part IX – Counter-Terror
13:18 Part X – Princes Gate
14:40 Part XI – Falklands and the Gulf
15:44 Part XII – Today
The narration in this video is AI-generated. Visuals are archival and documentary photographs; some show related units, places or equipment rather than the exact moment described.
Which country’s special forces should we cover next? Tell us in the comments.
SOURCES: National Army Museum (David Stirling), Imperial War Museums (Battle of Mirbat), Wikipedia (History of the Special Air Service, Iranian Embassy siege, Battle of Mirbat).
MUSIC: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).
Tracks: Interloper, Lightless Dawn, Gathering Darkness, Crusade – Heavy Industry, Long Note Four, Despair and Triumph, Rising Tide, Darkest Child, Hiding Your Reality, Echoes of Time v2
IMAGES: Archival images via Wikimedia Commons (public domain and Creative Commons). Full image credits are in the pinned comment.
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