Double dare
BY MATT ROPER A RARE image of our SAS in action in 1980 came to represent the consummate skill and heroism that has made them admired by armies around the world.
The crack troops were snapped as they stormed the Iranian Embassy in West London, where terrorists had taken 26 hostages.
The daring 17-minute raid was one of the few times they have been seen in action and most of the regiment’s exploits will never be told as it prides itself on secrecy. This week, however, a new image of its heroism emerged as cameras caught an operative storming a Nairobi hotel single-handedly to tackle terrorist gunmen and lead hostages to safety.
The soldier, in Kenya training the country’s own special forces, was reportedly out shopping when al-Shabaab fighters targeted the complex – and sprinted back to his car to kit-up and wade in.
Here, SAS legend Chris Ryan, who spent 10 years in the regiment and walked 200 miles to the Syrian border in the Gulf War to escape Iraqi forces, tells of a few of its finest hours. COURAGE SAS man in Kenya When a Taliban commander escaped a joint British and Afghan special forces raid and disappeared into a narrow mountain tunnel, an SAS soldier volunteered to go in after him alone.
Afghan soldiers had refused to enter the terrorist-riddled cave complex, where tunnels were barely big enough for a man to fit inside.
So the SAS sergeant crawled into the dark tunnel system to locate the enemy fighter. The unnamed 29-year-old, from the Midlands, eventually found three Taliban soldiers inside the narrow caves and shot them dead with his Glock sidearm. When he saw another, he pointed it towards him but the gun failed.
Without enough room for a longbarrelled weapon, he picked up a claw hammer and hit the Taliban soldier over the head. A source said: “He fought two more in the dark where the When terrorists hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 30 minutes into its flight from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt, German chancellor Helmut Schmidt asked for help from our special forces.
SAS veterans Sgt Maj Barry Davies and Maj Alastair Morrison were summoned to Downing Street, where they set about devising a plan to rescue the hostages – 86 passengers, including 11 German beauty queens, and five crew.
Davies told ministers, as well as German anti-terror unit GSG9, an assault using recentlydeveloped stun grenades offered the best chance.
Over the next few days, they trailed the Boeing 737 as the four Palestinian terrorists, demanding the release of prisoners in Germany and Turkey, made the pilots fly to airports in Rome, Cyprus, Bahrain, Dubai, Aden, and Mogadishu in Somalia. In Dubai, the SAS and GSG9 operatives were on the point of making an assault when it took off and flew to Aden – where pilot Jurgen Schumann was shot dead.
The co-pilot flew the plane to Mogadishu, where Schumann’s body was dumped on the tarmac and an tunnel opened into a larger room which was partially lit by a candle.
“After he killed those two, he was attacked by another but killed him almost instantly with a single blow. It was a brutal fight to the death.
“The SAS sergeant emerged from the tunnel half an hour later covered in blood, both his own and those of the men he had killed.”
He later said that the minutes he spent inside the caves had been the hardest of his military career.
Chris says: “It was an incredible act of bravery, going in to one of the tunnel systems by himself, the claustrophobia, and lack of air – the thought of it is absolutely terrifying.
“The soldier was so traumatised he was unable to speak for a time after coming out. But his bravery is not extraordinary among SAS soldiers, it’s just what they do.” ultimatum issued for the release of the prisoners. There, Davies and Morrison’s daring plan was put into action.
Shortly before midnight, Somali soldiers lit a large bonfire on the runway to create a diversion and draw the hijackers into the cockpit, as the assault team approached the rear.
As the emergency doors were blown in, the SAS men hurled stun grenades as German soldiers stormed in, telling hostages to lie down and opening fire.
Three terrorists were killed, including the leader, who died before he could detonate the grenades rigged up around the plane. Only four hostages and a German soldier were wounded.
Chris says at first, no one knew of the role of the SAS. “Whenever anything happened they were who governments would call first. But often no one found out the SAS were behind them. Even during the Waco siege in the US we had two advisors there. The way the Lufthansa hijacking was carried out follows the textbook to the letter, I’ve taken part in training on planes using exactly the same tactics.”
Davies, who died in 2016, was later awarded the British Empire Medal and Morrison the OBE.