SpecForce
German Frogmen in Action II
German frogmen enter the water as they begin one of their river raids. There was little time to rest upon their newly-acquired laurels. From the beginning of the Allied landings in Normandy to the eventual collapse of the German front in France the K-Verbände frogmen would undertake twenty-four missions, the majority of them successful. Amongst the frogmen’s achievements were the…
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SS in Iran
Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetzov in Wehrmacht uniform. While undercover posing as a Wehrmacht officer, Kuznetzov learned about Operation Long Jump. The first attempt to land German troops in Iran was unsuccessful. On 15 July 1941 in strict secrecy three Ju 52s took off from one of the islands in…
Operation Archery
With Winston Churchill’s direction, a plan was put together to carry out a raid against German positions on the island of Vaagso. It would not be the first time that commandos had visited Norway. A raid had already taken place earlier in the year much further to the north, called…
JSOC Missions
USASOC’s shoulder sleeve insignia worn by Delta operators, depicting the historical Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife inside the outline of an arrowhead. No proof ever emerged that American POWs were being held in Laos or anywhere else in Indochina, but one American soldier who did become a prisoner during this period was…
JSOC Gets Its Feet Wet
The peaceful resolution of the hostage drama gave Scholtes and JSOC time to draw breath and consider their role in the Reagan-era national security structure. A February 1981 memo from Caspar Weinberger, the new administration’s defense secretary, directing each service to “maintain and continue to develop its own capabilities,” not…
Bruneval Raid
27/28 February 1942 Today the Parachute Regiment forms an elite and vital airborne element of the British Army. Trained to conduct a range of missions and ready to form the spearhead for rapid intervention, it is light by design as its operations are usually based on speed. The paras formed…
OPERATION VP 101Â (BARBARA)
Laksevaag bunker depot, looking north-west, July 1943. Among the locations in which Welman submersibles were tested was the Queen Mary reservoir at Staines, Surrey. The plan to sabotage the dock at Bergen, 1943 At the end of November 1943, an audacious raid was made against the German-occupied port of Bergen.…