Lieutenant colonel David Stirling (standing) and his troops put jeeps to great use (Image credit: Getty) He was eventually captured in January 1943, escaped, but was then re-captured by the Italians and sent to Colditz Castle, where he remained for the rest of the war. Stirling and his men's biggest success came on the night of 26–27 July 1942 when the young SAS squadron, armed with 18 jeeps, raided the Sidi Haneish landing strip and destroyed 37 Axis aircraft, with the loss of just one man.įield Marshal Montgomery described Stirling as 'mad, quite mad' but believed that men like him were needed in time of war and his unit caused such problems for the Nazis that Field Marshall Erwin Rommel dubbed him 'The Phantom Major'. The unit was given the deliberately misleading name 'L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade'.Īfter only a brief period of training the unit began operations and after a series of setbacks, they eventually achieved great success, wreaking havoc in enemy airfields with the use of machine- gun-mounted American Jeeps. He wasn't able to find Auchinleck, yet did speak to deputy chief of staff, Major General Neil Ritchie, who persuaded the Commander-in-Chief to allow Stirling to form a new special operations unit.

Stirling travelled to Africa as part of the new No.8 Commandos and when the unit suffered a series of setbacks he became convinced that due to the nature of modern mechanised warfare, a small team of highly trained soldiers with the advantage of surprise could attack several targets from the desert in a single night.ĭeciding to take his idea straight to Commander-in-Chief General Sir Claude Auchinleck, he broke into the British army's Middle East HQ in Cairo, while using crutches for an injury sustained during a parachuting accident (as depicted in the first episode of SAS: Rogue Heroes).

He was training to climb Mount Everest when World War Two broke out in 1939. After attending Cambridge University, he headed to Paris to become an artist, before being commissioned into the Scots Guards in 1937.

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