Regardless, the SAS was initially disbanded and wasn't reorganized until 1952. By the end of the war, the SAS Brigade had grown to two British regiments, two French regiments and a Belgian regiment had proved to be a valuable addition to the British Army. By the end of the war, the scaled down 1 SAS had destroyed over 100 enemy aircraft in North Africa caused chaos in Italy and France. Sterling felt that battalion-sized Commandos that had been formed early in the WW2 were too cumbersome for covert operations. The SAS was the brainchild of David Stirling, a 24-year old Scots Guards Subaltern. In a 17 minute action, the soldiers of the SAS Regiment rescued 24 from the remaining 25 hostages and killed 5 out of 6 terrorists without losing a single man. ![]() But its best known action was the so-called Operation Nimrod which was carried out during the Iranian Embassy Siege in London in 1980. In 1959, another regiment – the 23rd SAS Regiment was formed and became a part of the reserve Territorial Army.įrom its formal formation in 1952, the 22nd SAS Regiment carried out a number of operations in many parts of the world. In 1952, the British government also decided to form a Regular Army SAS regiment and added the Squadron 2 (Malay Scouts) to the army list as the 22nd SAS Regiment. However, the government soon changed its mind and a new SAS regiment was raised in less than two years after the end of the war. Stirling was held prisoner by the end of the war although he escaped several times before the Germans moved him to an “escape-proof” castle in the town of Colditz, Germany.Īfter the end of the Second World War, the British government decided that there is no need for a special air service regiment any longer and disbanded the existing 1st and 2nd SAS regiments joined in the SAS Brigade. He replaced David Stirling who was captured by the Germans in Tunisia in 1943. ![]() ![]() However, it was reorganized several times by 1944 when it supported the Allied advance towards Germany and meanwhile got a new commander – Paddy Mayne. For most of the war, the Stirling’s unit operated in North Africa and the Greek islands although it also fought in Sicily and Italy, and later in Western Europe. It was not a paratroop regiment with a number of units like its name suggested but it was intentionally given a misleading name so that the Axis would think that they are dealing with a number of units rather than one commando unit. History of the SAS Regiment dates back to the Second World War when David Stirling founded the so-called L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade which was used to operate behind the enemy lines in North Africa.
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