00:00May 5th, 1980. 7.23 in the evening. Live on television on a bank holiday Monday evening.
00:06Black figures drop from the roof of the Iranian embassy in London and smash through the windows.
00:1117 minutes later, it is over. 19 hostages are free, and the badge on those men's berets was
00:16drawn in a desert 39 years earlier. This is the full story of the S-ass. It begins in July
00:221941
00:22with a lieutenant on crutches walking into headquarters with an idea nobody wanted.
00:27Small teams, behind enemy lines, destroying aircraft in the dark. It ends 39 years later
00:32on live television in 17 minutes. From a failed first raid to the most famous rescue in special
00:38forces history, this is your life as an S-ass soldier. You are David Sterling, 25 years old,
00:43a lieutenant in the Scots Guards, and you have just hurt yourself in an unauthorized parachute jump.
00:49You are in hospital in Cairo, and you are bored, and you are thinking. The war in the desert is
00:53a war
00:54of aircraft and fuel. Destroy the aircraft on the ground, and the enemy cannot fly. Your idea is a
00:59handful of men, dropped by parachute, walking to the airfields at night. You write the plan down,
01:04you get yourself out of hospital, and on crutches, you walk into Middle East headquarters to sell it.
01:09The deputy chief of staff listens. Then the commander-in-chief, General Achenlek, listens,
01:14and he says yes. You get a camp at Kabrit in Egypt. Five officers, 60 men, and a name that
01:19is a lie
01:20on purpose. L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade. There is no brigade. The name exists
01:25to make the enemy believe there is one. Beside you is Jock Luz, who builds the training and the
01:30spirit of the unit, and invents a small bomb for burning parked aircraft, the Luz Bomb. And Patty
01:35Main, a former rugby international, who brings the fighting edge. You are not an army, you are 65 men
01:40with an idea. The men joke that their first operation is stealing from a nearby New Zealand regiment.
01:45Tents, bedding, tables, chairs, and a piano. You are living on stolen furniture, waiting for your
01:51first real raid. Your first raid is Operation Squatter, on the night of the 16th of November,
01:561941. You parachute behind enemy lines in Libya to attack the airfields at Gazala and Timimi.
02:02The weather turns, the drop scatters. A third of your men are killed or captured, and not a single
02:07aircraft is destroyed. Your idea has failed on its first night, but you do not quit. In December,
02:12you stop jumping. The Long Range Desert Group drives you to the airfields instead, and in one
02:17month, you destroy 60 aircraft without losing a man. By the end of the Desert War, the National Army
02:23Museum puts your total at more than 300. The idea worked. It just needed wheels, not parachutes.
02:29Patty Main alone destroys more aircraft on the ground than any Royal Air Force fighter ace shoots down
02:34in the air. The cost comes fast. Jacques Luce is killed in December, 1941, weeks after the first
02:39raid. In January, 1943, Hugh Sterling are captured in Tunisia. Patty Main takes command. The regiment
02:46fights on through Italy and France, and when the war ends, on the 8th of October, 1945, the SAS is
02:51disbanded, gone. The SAS died in 1945. So why is it still here? Because the idea refused to die with
02:57it.
02:57In 1952, a new regular regiment is born, 22SS, and with it, a test that will become the hardest
03:04selection in the world. It was built by Lieutenant Colonel John Woodhouse, and it starts in the
03:08Brecon Beacons, in Wales. Twice a year, summer and winter, men arrive to be broken. The first week
03:14ends with the Fan Dance. 24 kilometers over Penwy Fan, the highest mountain in the Beacons, climb twice,
03:20carrying a heavy pack and a rifle, in 4 hours and 10 minutes, whatever the weather. Then the marches get
03:26longer and the packs get heavier, day after day, until the final test of the hills. The long drag.
03:3164 kilometers, 20 hours. Alone, navigating from checkpoint to checkpoint, carrying your rifle,
03:37your food, your water, and everything you need to survive. Around 9 in 10 fail. Roughly 1 in 10 makes
03:42it through. And the hills are only the first phase. Then comes the jungle. Six weeks living on rations in
03:48patrols of four. You stand to for an hour at dawn and an hour at dusk. Your knife never leaves
03:53your side.
03:53In the jungle, the real enemy is infection. Every cut, every bite can end your selection.
03:58Then escape and evasion. Three days loose in the countryside in a second world war greatcoat,
04:03a hunter force behind you. If they catch you, and they usually do, you face 36 hours of interrogation,
04:09stress positions, white noise. And you may answer with only four things. Your name, your rank,
04:14your serial number, your date of birth. Anything more, and you fail. Pass all of it,
04:18and you earn the sand-colored beret. Passing selection is not the end. It is only the beginning.
04:24Because the beret is only the beginning. And the jungle is where the sass learned what it really is.
04:29In 1950, the regiment is reborn in Malaya, fighting a communist insurgency in the jungle.
04:34Under Brigadier Mad Mike Calvert, the Malayan scouts learn a new way to fight.
04:38Long patrols, tracking, ambush, and winning the people. Medical teams go village to village,
04:43hearts and minds. Ivan trackers from Borneo walk beside them. In February 1951, 54 men make the
04:49first parachute drop of the campaign, into the jungle near the Thai border. The force grows fast.
04:55By 1951, there are more than 900 men in the jungle, in four squadrons. They jump from the trees.
05:01They patrol the rivers in inflatable boats. They booby-trap the enemy's supplies.
05:05In 1952, the scouts become 22 SS, and the regular regiment is back. Then Borneo.
05:10From 1963 to 1966, Britain fights the confrontation with Indonesia, and a sass patrols cross the border
05:17into Kalimantan, up to 20 kilometers deep, living in local villages for months at a time,
05:22winning trust by respecting the headmen, giving gifts, treating the sick.
05:26In 1964, Operation Claret turns the patrols into hunter-killers, striking up to 18 kilometers
05:32inside enemy territory, in operations so secret they are not admitted for decades.
05:36In April 1965, Captain Robin Letts leads a patrol that ambushes enemy boats on a river
05:42near Babang Baba, then walks out through three days of enemy patrols, and wins the military
05:47cross for it. This is where the sass learns to fight as four. Four men, one patrol, one mind.
05:52Everything you will need later is learned here, in the trees. And then, London.
05:56The 30th of April, 1980. 11.30 in the morning. Six gunmen storm the Iranian embassy at 16 Prince's
06:03Gate and take 26 people hostage, embassy staff, visitors, and PC Trevor Locke, the police officer,
06:08guarding the door. Their leader calls himself Salim. For six days, the country watches. Five
06:13hostages are released. Then, on the evening of the 5th of May, the gunmen kill a hostage,
06:18the cultural attaché Abbas Lavassani, and push his body out of the embassy. The Prime Minister,
06:23Margaret Thatcher, authorizes an assault. At 7.23, two teams go in. Red team takes the top
06:29floors. Blue team takes the ground floors. Men abseil 40 feet from the roof to a second floor
06:34window. Stun grenades, glass, gunfire. Live on television. The whole country is watching.
06:3917 minutes later, it is over. 19 hostages are rescued. Five of the six gunmen are killed.
06:45The sixth is captured. One sass soldier is wounded. The siege is declared over at 8.15.
06:49An inquest later clears the men of wrongdoing. The building, burned in the assault, does not
06:54reopen until 1993. Before that night, few people outside the military had even heard of the
07:00regiment. After it, the whole country knew its name, and the badge they wore that night was
07:04drawn in October 1941. Sergeant Bob Tate, a man who had been on the first raid, drew it. The sword
07:10of Excalibur, pointing down, wrapped in flames, on a crusader's shield. Sterling rejected two
07:15mottos first, strike and destroy, and descend to ass end, before he settled on three words,
07:20who dares wins. The sword drawn in the desert was still pointing down on the berets of the men who
07:25went through those windows, 39 years later. That is the story. A lieutenant on crutches. A failed
07:31first raid. A test that breaks nine men in ten. A jungle that teaches you to fight as four, and
07:3717
07:37minutes that made the whole world watch. The sass was never the biggest regiment. It was never the
07:42loudest. It was an idea, small teams behind the lines, doing what nobody else could, and the idea
07:47never died. Next Friday, the story continues with the Rangers. 62 days to earn the tab. Three phases,
07:53one of the hardest courses in the American military. Subscribe so you do not miss it. And tell me in
07:58the
07:58comments, at which point would you have quit? The fan dance, the jungle, or the 17 minutes?
