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00:00In this episode...
00:01That ain't special, Ed. Now, come on, mate. What's going on here?
00:05Actually, I think you'll find it is pretty special.
00:08A dark piece of kit, this.
00:10That's a terrible, terrible item.
00:12But a very good one.
00:13They were beautifully made, and it's actually a very, very rare weapon.
00:22Hello and welcome to Battle Treasures. I'm Jason Fox, a former Special Forces soldier.
00:26And next to me is a man who treats his artefacts like fine wine.
00:30The older, the better. And the story is everything.
00:34Bruce Compton.
00:35Thank you, Jason. I do like a drop of wine, but he doesn't stay on the shelf that long.
00:39Ed, what we got today?
00:40So, I've got some sneaky, beaky artefacts for you today.
00:45The theme of this episode is going to be iconic special operations.
00:51Ooh. Oh, yeah.
00:52Right up my street.
00:53I thought that. So, let's get into it.
00:56I am actually super excited about this one.
00:59Oh, yes.
01:01There's nothing exciting about one of them.
01:03I can tell you that for nothing.
01:04It is a British military issue S6 respirator.
01:10That's right.
01:11To the Americans, it will be called a gas mask.
01:13But here in Britain, it is called a respirator.
01:16That ain't special, Ed.
01:17Now, come on, mate. What's going on here?
01:19Actually, I think you'll find it is pretty special.
01:22Why is it?
01:22So, I'm going to give you a clue.
01:23Here we go.
01:24Ready?
01:24Here's a map.
01:26That's not a clue.
01:28That's the answer.
01:29It's Operation Nimrod.
01:32Okay.
01:33Iranian embassy siege.
01:351980?
01:361980.
01:36Twenty-six hostages were taken.
01:39Six terrorists were in there.
01:41The SAS went in a well-planned operation.
01:45They prepared wonderfully.
01:48But when they actually went in, they managed to eliminate five of the terrorists,
01:53released all but one of the hostages, who was unfortunately killed,
01:57and then they basically got all the hostages out.
02:01A very successful operation.
02:03If I remember rightly, one of the terrorists pretended to be a hostage.
02:08That's how he survived.
02:09Yeah, that's how he survived.
02:10I'm going to show another picture for you.
02:12That mask you're holding in your hands is on the middle guy there.
02:16And I know that because that guy, if you notice, doesn't have exactly...
02:22Unlike us.
02:23Yeah, gloves on.
02:24And he forgot to put them on just before the raid.
02:29Do you know who it is?
02:29Rusty Furman.
02:30Correct.
02:31This is actually Rusty Furman's resi respirator.
02:34Yes.
02:35So look, I've got another picture.
02:37So that picture there is a picture that was plastered all over the news,
02:41and it is of the four guys that went into the embassy from the balcony.
02:47Now, there are an awful lot of people, more than four,
02:50that claim to be one of the members on the balcony.
02:53Yeah.
02:54The balcony should be about the size of a football pitch
02:56because there's about a thousand people that have claimed to be on the balcony.
03:00I mean, that's the beauty of having a mask on that no one would see your face.
03:04That operation was iconic.
03:05It was the first special forces operation, especially for the British,
03:08that was basically televised.
03:11They couldn't hide.
03:12It was there for everyone to see.
03:13It was reported on.
03:14Yeah, it was live.
03:16And it also inspired a film that was called in Britain, Who Dares Wins.
03:22I'm telling you now, that film, as you're well aware, Bruce,
03:28inspired generations to join the special forces.
03:31And that film is the reason why I wanted to join the special forces.
03:34Who Dares Wins is an iconic film starring Lewis Collins.
03:39Look at this.
03:42Ah, now who's the better looking there?
03:44I can see Lewis Collins.
03:45There's the other geezer.
03:46Let me tell you, look, look at that.
03:47That's me.
03:48No way.
03:49I think it was 1979, I think, something like that.
03:52I know him very well.
03:53He was a nice guy.
03:55He really was a nice guy.
03:56That's awesome.
03:56There's an iconic moment in that film.
03:59Anyone watching or listening to this, you've got to go and watch it.
04:03Where...
04:03I know what you're going to say.
04:04Go on.
04:05Go on.
04:05Come on, come on.
04:07Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:07So this helicopter comes in with two SAS guys dangling from wires.
04:13And the helicopter comes in and they supposedly smash through the windows.
04:19Right.
04:19Let me explain something about that.
04:21I have never done that.
04:22I've never been taught that.
04:23And I think for a few reasons.
04:25Maybe it did happen on one occasion or two during training.
04:29But you've got to get the length of those cables correct.
04:33They've got to be configured right.
04:35And also, you've got to have an awful lot of trust in that pilot.
04:38Because if he gets his altitude wrong, you're slap bang into the wall, not the window.
04:41That's what I thought.
04:42Listen, for me though, it was the theme tune.
04:45The theme tune to the film was...
04:48Oh, yes.
04:49I've got to say, in the Special Forces, even to this day,
04:52whenever you're doing counter-terrorism exercises or whatnot,
04:57you're going into a stronghold.
04:59There will be someone over the radio, in your ear, humming that theme tune.
05:04No way.
05:05Okay.
05:06I mean, it's insanely dangerous though, isn't it?
05:09So hostage rescues, and I may or may not have been involved in them.
05:16Weirdly, everyone in the Special Forces wants to be on a hostage rescue.
05:20And when you think about it, you're like, why?
05:23And maybe this operation sort of sparks that want to be on a hostage rescue.
05:31But I think it's more than that.
05:33I think the reason guys want to go on hostage rescues is because normally,
05:37when you're in the Special Forces, when you're a soldier anyway,
05:39you're doing quite a difficult job and you never really know if you're doing well.
05:44You're just told by the hierarchy,
05:46yep, great job.
05:46You overran the enemy.
05:47You overcame the enemy.
05:48You're denying them the ability to manoeuvre or operate,
05:51which is all well and good, but you can't really quantify it.
05:53Whereas on a hostage rescue, there is the ability to quantify that
05:58because you have walked away saving someone's life.
06:00And I think that's what it's all about.
06:02Right.
06:03But when you look at it, everything is stacked against you.
06:07It's a stronghold.
06:08It's in their backyard.
06:08It's in a place of their choosing at a time of their choosing.
06:11And you haven't got any time to deal with it.
06:14You've just got to get in there and go.
06:15So it's a bit of a, it's a weird one.
06:19Everyone wants to do one.
06:20They're very few and far between.
06:21But when you're in it, you're like that,
06:23you've got to be very careful what you wish for,
06:25because sometimes it can turn into an absolute ball of chalk.
06:29We should probably crack on.
06:30Well, we should crack on.
06:32We're getting to the point where this is obviously the centerpiece.
06:35Rusty Furman's S6 respirator that was on the job on Operation Nimrod.
06:40How much do you reckon this is worth?
06:42Okay.
06:43With the provenance, at the right auction, with the provenance,
06:47if you had Rusty Furman there declaring it, you'd get £2,500 for it.
06:54Yeah.
06:55So this is the S6.
06:56We were issued when I joined up the S10.
06:58So it's a newer variant.
07:00And then when I was in the special forces,
07:01they brought in even better, newer versions.
07:04Where could you probably see something like this?
07:07All museums that have got NBC kit will have them.
07:11Coming up, Jason handles one of the deadliest artefacts yet.
07:16There is a small ball bearing on a black square that has got borders,
07:21so it can't roll out of it.
07:22And to be quite honest, I haven't got a scooby what this is.
07:27Neither have I.
07:38So Freddie's already on his way to the safe.
07:41I can't even see it.
07:42Neither can I.
07:43Blind as a bat.
07:44Hang on a minute.
07:44Okay.
07:45There is a small ball bearing on a black square that has got borders,
07:50so it can't roll out of it, but it's rolling around.
07:53It's in a plastic sleeve.
07:58And to be quite honest, I haven't got a scooby what this is.
08:03Neither have I.
08:03So this is a two-parter.
08:05A two-parter.
08:06So that is fired from something.
08:10Right.
08:11So just put that to one side.
08:13Now, Freddie, show them the main item.
08:16What?
08:17You've got to be careful.
08:18You've got to be very careful with this.
08:19What we've got here is an umbrella.
08:21Okay.
08:22Just before you get into this.
08:24Right.
08:25The end of that, there is a hidden mechanism in it.
08:28So be very careful.
08:30Hang on.
08:30So I can take this bit off at the end.
08:33Is that right?
08:33Yeah.
08:34Ah.
08:35Ah, there's a pin.
08:36Yes.
08:37Ah.
08:38So that would have been inside and it would have been fired into you.
08:45Rice in pellet.
08:46Ah, what that is.
08:47Bingo.
08:48Rice in pellet.
08:48That's a rice in pellet.
08:49Yeah.
08:49That's a rice in pellet.
08:50It doesn't have any rice in it.
08:52So don't worry.
08:53All right.
08:54Okay.
08:54But that really is a genuine rice in pellet.
08:58So this is essentially an assassin's weapon.
09:02Correct.
09:02Do you know about this, Bruce?
09:04Yeah.
09:05My understanding is that the umbrella was designed and possibly built by the KGB,
09:11distributed to the Bulgarians.
09:14And it was the Bulgarians that used this in a number of assassinations.
09:18Are assassination attempts against Bulgarian dissidents.
09:22The most famous in this country was on Waterloo Bridge, but I can't think of the guy's name.
09:28So here he is.
09:30That's poor old Georgi Markov.
09:32And he worked for the BBC and he was a dissident and spoke out against Bulgaria and Russia.
09:41So he was anti-Soviet essentially.
09:44Yeah.
09:44And so Bruce is exactly right on Waterloo Bridge.
09:48And he was standing at a bus stop and a guy came up next to him and jabbed him in
09:54the leg.
09:54And he was like, oh.
09:55And Georgi knew what happened.
09:58Really?
09:58Straight away?
09:59Yeah.
09:59And he was like, he went to hospital and said, I think there's something in me.
10:03And the doctor's like, no mate, you're fine.
10:05And he died.
10:06And then in his autopsy they found that tiny pellet, a tiny pellet exactly the same as that.
10:13It's 1.7 millimetres in diameter.
10:17And it's a platinum iridium pellet.
10:21And apparently it has an X shaped cavity inside it filled with ricin, which is a toxin derived from caster
10:30beans.
10:31And that artifact, I mean.
10:33It's terrible.
10:35It's such a rare artifact.
10:37It's really extraordinary.
10:38We're very lucky to have it on the show.
10:39Yes, and you've bought out of the stadium here, mate.
10:41That's incredible.
10:42That is an incredible kit.
10:44You know, the fact that they were made and these things were designed specifically to kill you silently.
10:50Apparently the guy that dropped his umbrella and other people said, oh, that was a distraction, but it wasn't.
10:55It was to plug in with that.
10:56And then he ran across the road and got in a taxi.
10:58So it was planned.
11:00Oh, yeah.
11:01Completely planned.
11:02It's disgusting business, the old biological and chemical warfare, to be honest.
11:06It's not a nice environment to be operating in.
11:09Disgusting.
11:10You get taught actually in the military how to operate in a nuclear, a biological and a chemical warfare environment.
11:17I think you get about a week's worth of lectures, presentations, and then you go out on exercises.
11:22And essentially it's like, don't get involved in this stuff because it's just, it's horrible.
11:28It's almost impossible to operate, to live within that environment.
11:31But what they do do is they show you videos of people that are affected by chemical or biological agents.
11:39And back in the 70s, the Russians were testing and filming the effects on their own people, on their own
11:46troops.
11:47So you'd see the effects of a nerve agent and how it would slowly kill someone.
11:51That's a terrible, terrible item.
11:54Terrible, absolutely terrible.
11:55Terrible item, but a very good one.
11:56Yeah.
11:57A dark piece of kit this, and I don't mean because of the colour, it's just a dark piece of
12:02kit.
12:03I'm interested to know how much one of these will cost nowadays.
12:06That's really going to stump me.
12:08I mean something like that.
12:09They did make, I've seen photographs where they made quite a few of these, so they were used.
12:13I don't know what you pick one of those up for.
12:16Maybe, I don't know, 3,000 pounds possibly.
12:20Because it's the mechanism down here that's ingenious.
12:25So at the right auction, because of the rarity of it, there ain't many of them.
12:31I mean, I don't know how you've got hold of this one, but in all fairness, I'd say you'd probably
12:36pay up to 3,000 pounds.
12:38Am I close or not?
12:39What did you say?
12:403,000?
12:40About 3,000.
12:41You're way off.
12:42Right.
12:43So our expert reckons in this tough market, he said, that people don't really like to buy Russian stuff for
12:52obvious reasons.
12:53Right, yeah.
12:53He said this would be worth around about 20,000, 25,000.
12:56No way that's worth 25,000.
12:58I don't think.
12:58I'm quite shocked at that.
13:01That's a high, high estimate.
13:03Yeah.
13:03But there you go.
13:04But where can people go and see something like this?
13:07Again, hit him straight back to the main place that we've had a lot of material from, the Combined Military
13:14Service Museum.
13:15They have got the best collection of secret weapons, spy equipment anywhere in the country.
13:21And I can adhere to that 100%.
13:23Awesome.
13:24So Jason, assassinations.
13:26They happen a lot on our soil.
13:28Do we go and assassinate people in foreign countries?
13:33You know, does that really happen?
13:34I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you.
13:36Oh, I knew you were going to say that.
13:37Don't kill me.
13:39I can neither confirm or deny.
13:41Yes.
13:42Okay.
13:42I'm taking that as a yes then.
13:44Right.
13:45Let's crack on to our next item.
13:49Here we go.
13:50Look.
13:51Striking.
13:52Yes.
13:53Striking.
13:55Right.
13:56I might get this slightly wrong, but this looks like a gold Dragunov.
14:01Now, a Dragunov is a Soviet-made sniper weapon.
14:08It says on it actually, made in Iraq, so it's not Soviet.
14:13It obviously comes from the Middle East.
14:16Outside of that, I could hazard a few guesses, but I'm not going to do that.
14:20I'm going to hand over to you, Bruce, and I'm going to allow you to fill in the blanks.
14:25Okay.
14:26This is a copy of the Dragunov.
14:28It's actually called an Al-Qaeda seer.
14:31And basically, Al-Qaeda seer was a famous battle which happened in Iraq in about the 8th century, something like
14:38that.
14:39Now, Saddam Hussein, rather than port and buy guns from everybody else, he wanted to set up his own arm
14:45industry.
14:45And he used the Yugoslavians to set up an armaments industry in Iraq, producing AK-47s, a host of other
14:53weapons, but he wanted the Dragunov.
14:56You're right.
14:56This is the sniper rifle.
14:58Now, what's bizarre about this, it's actually got the workings of an AK-47, but many parts that are identical
15:05to a Dragunov.
15:06They were beautifully made, and he used these and kept these himself.
15:10He had a lot of gold-plated weapons himself, and he did make some to be presented to hierarchies in
15:18his army, but that's what it is.
15:20It's actually a very, very rare weapon.
15:23That's all well and good, Bruce, but Ed, what has this got to do with iconic special ops?
15:31I thought it was blatantly obvious. I mean, that is a gun that was owned by Saddam Hussein, and Saddam
15:38Hussein was captured by Delta Force.
15:41Okay, mate. Fair point. I actually do know someone that was on that capture operation.
15:50No way. I do. But more importantly, I think more interestingly, a story that is basically hinged on the capture
15:59of Saddam Hussein.
16:00Delta Force went in, and they found him in that sort of hiding space, this hole in the ground.
16:06Isn't it a tunnel to me? There was a tunnel. It was a hole in the ground. He'd basically scurried
16:11into it, and he was a dishevelled person by that stage, a real shell of his former self.
16:17Now, as this was going on, the world's media had found out about this operation, and they were close on
16:23the heels of Delta Force.
16:26And I think it was CBS. Now, I could be wrong, but I think CBS had a crew that were
16:31literally right behind the team, and they've basically dragged Saddam out of that hole, pulled him off to one side.
16:40And there was a former member of the British Special Forces who was now working in a security capacity with,
16:48I think, CBS.
16:49As they've dragged him away, he peered into the hole, and he's seen a flip-flop.
16:55He's looked across, seen that Saddam's only got one flip-flop, and realised that that's Saddam's other flip-flop.
17:01And he thought, I'm having that. Whipped it out, added away. Now, it is a little bit of a myth
17:06of a story, an urban myth, but apparently, somewhere, there is Saddam's flip-flop,
17:13mounted, framed, on display in a private area, so I don't know where that is.
17:19We have to get that. You've got to get hold of that, mate. Let's be fair, come on.
17:21That is going to be my mission. Pull the rabbit out of the air, you've got to have that old
17:25flip-flop.
17:26Saddam's flip-flop? There are lots of stories of, like, modern-day Kelly's Heroes,
17:31events happening, especially in Iraq. Like you can see from there, there were Saddam's palaces all over the place.
17:38His daughters had palaces and villas. His sons, who weren't nice people, they had palaces and villas.
17:44And, obviously, when the coalition went ripping through there, people were sort of dangled the carrots of the fortunes of
17:53war
17:53and started tearing through these palaces. There are stories of people taking things, liberating them, shall we say.
18:00They're like the gold dragon off. There's gold AKs. There's blunderbusts that are encrusted in priceless jewels.
18:07Gold taps. People have gone to the toilet in gold toilets. It's mad.
18:11Have you ever been to Langley, CIA Langley? So, I think they've got a gold AK-47 from Saddam's palace
18:20there as well.
18:22There's a few of them about. There's stories of lads going into one of the sons' palaces in Baghdad.
18:31I don't know whether it was Uze or Ude. Really, really nasty people, apparently, by all accounts.
18:37They've gone in, and as they've ripped through it, you know, searching for anything that might lead them to other
18:42sort of people of interest.
18:43They actually found in the back garden, I think it was something like five or six lions, malnourished, hanging.
18:49And that became their main effort, was like, right, how the hell are we going to get these lions out
18:54of here
18:54to somewhere where they can get themselves back on track to being healthy?
18:58Anyway, I'm more interested in how much this thing will set you back.
19:02Bruce, you got any idea?
19:04Well, I know one, actually, I think two of his gold AKs have sold for an exceptional amount of money.
19:12Now, I'd certainly put that in an auction at probably somewhere in the region of about £70,000.
19:21That's what I would think that would go for.
19:23Well, this guy reckons only £4,000 to £5,000.
19:26Well, yeah, but this is a dragon.
19:27I don't know, mate. You know what I mean? This is going to fetch some dollar.
19:33I think so.
19:34The thing that interests me about this is it's obviously, it's from, it's definitely from one of Saddam's palaces.
19:40It's one that he had commissioned to be made because he wanted an Iraqi weapon.
19:45And it's named after a famous battle that is obviously will mean something way more to an Iraqi that's interested
19:53in Iraqi history.
19:56Yeah, I mean, the provenance of it is indisputable.
20:00And so probably that is insured for a hell of a lot of money.
20:04It is. But the difference, just one thing I would say, the market is slightly different.
20:08This is totally deactivated.
20:10And although with its provenance, it'd still be worth a lot of money.
20:12If it wasn't deactivated in America, it would probably fetch quite a bit more.
20:18Ed, well done. It's been brilliant.
20:21And we've had some great objects. So congratulations there.
20:24Thanks.
20:25Bruce, as always, it's a pleasure to have you here as the Oracle.
20:29Thank you very much.
20:30The font of knowledge.
20:31I really appreciate that.
20:32That's all we've got time for on this episode.
20:34Please join us again on Battle Treasures.
20:37Goodbye and thanks.
20:38Bye.
20:40Bye.
20:48Bye.
20:55Bye.
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