"Even for one who should know the details already, I was engrossed... an historical account linked with personal recall which makes the story come alive" - former SBS captain Len Holmes, BEM

For more than half a century the SBS has been involved in scores of secret, often politically sensitive and usually extremely dangerous sorties around the world. Yet public knowledge of its activities is so scant that many arc unaware of the existence of this small, highly trained force.
First published in 1997, SBS is the most complete and authoritative documentary of the unit, revealing previously classified secrets and featuring exclusive first-hand accounts of dramatic missions, past and present. Since 1997 the SBS has led campaigns in many of the world's trouble spots -East Timor, Sierra Leone and Kosovo -and, in the aftermath of 11 September, they were in the vanguard of Allied troops entering Afghanistan in the war against the Taliban. John Parker brings the story bang up to date with gripping accounts of these recent engagements and substantial additional material on previous operations.

Not by strength, by guile

The motto of the Special Boat Service is like the clue to a cryptic crossword. There’s a hidden meaning. They are strong, spectacular and dangerous, but everything they do has a twist to it, some extra element. Everyone knows that Special Forces the world over are, generally speaking, portrayed as fearless hard cases who barge in, guns blazing where others fear to tread. Even for the most overt of these groups, such as the SAS, it is never like that, of course. The ‘charge’ is the last act of a operation that requires meticulous planning, days, possibly weeks of undercover surveillance, specific pre-operational training and split second timing for the assault – otherwise they’d be falling dead in their droves when they finally go in.

This is doubly important for operatives of the Special Boat Service because they also do it on water, and that ingredient to their operations alone requires training, fitness and real-life work-ups of an extraordinary nature, that no-one ever sees, nor can assess, and which makes them among the most highly-skilled, technically adept and versatile units anywhere in the world. The sheer diversity of their range of skills and disciplines which will be demonstrated throughout this narrative, call for dedicated proficiency in approaching their tasks by land, sea or air and increasingly the SBS is in the vanguard of operations confronting military forces around the world, as they were in the battles against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan in 2001-2, and once again well ahead of the herd by about two weeks in the 2003 war on the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

They are skills that are applied to tackling the ever-threatening potential of today’s world of localised wars and the growth of international terrorism but which are rooted in past endeavours. As will be evident from the text, the history of the Special Boat Service from its foundations onwards, is comprehensively explored in these pages. Many of its major operations since its foundation are recorded and recalled, often by those who were there. In undertaking this task for the first edition of this work, in 1996/97, the author was given unprecedented access to former SBS personnel who traditionally have kept a low profile and are exceedingly security conscious for a number of reason. Additional material has since been researched for this new edition bringing the SBS story up to date.

The result is an intriguing and gripping narrative, already praised by former SBS officers, which respects their anonymity but which allows more than a glimpse into their ultra secret world which embraces everything from the safety of coastal installations around the United Kingdom, national security, counter-terrorism and intelligence gathering techniques ahead of large-scale troop movements which involve procedures and equipment of the highest secrecy classification.

Copyright © John Parker 2004
Site design: Chris Mitchell