504 • SPECIAL AIR SERVICE
ported to it. In addition,duck, a secretary for one of the senior dip-
lomats, gained access to cryptographic material, which assisted the
Government Code and Cipher Schoolin solving some of the Span-
ish Foreign Ministry’s ciphers.SPECIAL AIR SERVICE (SAS).Created by David Stirling to under-
take unorthodox commando-style operations with relatively small
groups of soldiers, the Special Air Service began in August 1941 as
‘‘L Detachment, SAS Brigade,’’ with only seven officers and 60 men,
as part of a Middle Eastdeceptionintended to persuade the enemy
that a full airborne brigade had been deployed to the Western Desert.
The SAS launched its first attack, on five enemy airfields in Tunisia,
in November 1941, but only four officers and 18 men survived out of
the 64 parachutists dropped. Only one of the target airfields was at-
tacked, and none of that group returned.
Despite this unpromising start and the capture in early 1943 of
Stirling, who spent the remainder of the war at Colditz Castle, the
SAS concept caught on, with 2 SAS commanded by David’s brother
Bill Stirling. By 1945, when the regiment was deployed to Norway
to disarm the German garrison, it consisted of 1, 2, 3, and 4 SAS;
two French battalions; and a Belgian SAS regiment. However, in
1947 the War Office disbanded the regular units and formed 21 SAS
(Artists) TA, a reserve regiment.
The SAS was reformed in January 1951 in Malaya and by the fol-
lowing year, having retrained as 22 SAS, was running patrols in sup-
port of the local police. It participated inhelsby, a deep penetration
of the jungle to eliminate terrorist camps close to the Thai border.
However, it was not until January 1957 that 22 SAS became part of
the regular army, with a brief that included ‘‘the collection of intelli-
gence by active and passive means,’’ leaving 21 SAS as a territorial
unit, and 23 SAS drawing on territorials from the north of England.
Since 1957 22 SAS has been deployed in Oman (1958–59),
Borneo (1962–66), Aden (1964 –67), Dhofar (1970–77), Ulster
(1968–97), theFalkland Islands(1982), Iraq (1991), Afghanistan
(2002), and on numerous other short-term operations, among them
the storming of the Iranian embassy in London in 1980, the liberation
of hostages in Sierra Leone in 2002, and the training of local special
forces in Colombia.