Despite the animosity, respect for the SBS was on the increase, and not only from the SAS, who had by their own admission been impressed by the way we took the platform, knowing they could not have accomplished it themselves. Some of the Navy élite were also hearing positive things about what we were trying to achieve, and not just in retaking oil platforms. But many at ministerial level still had to be convinced that we could carry out these difficult assaults in real situations. It was a bit like being in a chorus line. We felt we would only ever get noticed if we got a chance to do a solo.
There are many arms of the British military and all of them vie for special attention and funding as well as a chance to prove themselves. The anonymity of the SBS sometimes worked against us in this area. There were senior ministers and even top brass who thought the SBS was little more than a boat-driving unit (the US Navy has a Special Boat Section who are exactly that). In this area the SAS had another huge advantage over us. They were well represented in London (today’s commander in chief of all British forces is former SAS) as well as being the heroes of film, and mysterious celebrities in the press (even before the spate of SAS books). The SBS were going to have to do some PR work that could penetrate the bigwigs in the corridors of power.
To this end, the SBS began a campaign aimed at educating government ministers, members of GHQ, and officers who might soon rise to that position, in our skills. This campaign consisted of countless demonstrations in swimming pools, at sea and in our killing house. No member of the SBS was exempt from this advertising crusade. Royalty was not ignored by us, either. I once joined five other operatives to demonstrate climbing on board a naval frigate from the water undetected as it travelled at top speed while Prince Philip observed from a grandstand seat in a helicopter.
At one time, it seemed we were doing nothing else but these demonstrations and it was sometimes difficult not to get carried away with the unreality of it all. The temptation, after climbing on to a ship’s deck, to prance around on tippy-toes like the Flying Arpeggios at Billy Smart’s Circus, taking bows and waving to the audience, was great. After a demo in the camp swimming pool to show climbing techniques from out of the water using the high diving-board, an operative ran in and presented the sergeant in charge with a bouquet of flowers he had borrowed from somewhere. We were the only ones who were amused.
We often tried to put a bit of realism into the demos to give them some lift (something we learned from the Navy SEALs, who were great at putting on shows), but our special effects sometimes made the demos memorable in ways we did not intend. On one occasion, in the killing house, Mudders, an enthusiastic SBS sergeant, one of our Captain Hurricane look-and-act-alikes, personally prepared a room-entry demo for a two-star Army general.
This consisted of having the visiting dignitary inside the actual killing room while operatives burst in firing live rounds, shooting the place up around him. The dignitary was instructed to stand against a wall behind a thick, white line on the ground, and in no circumstances to move over it during the demo. The room was not much bigger than an average living-room and was furnished to simulate an office, home or ship’s bridge. Lifelike dummies holding weapons to represent terrorists were placed randomly about the room. The instructor stood in the centre of the room, surrounded by the dummies, while he described the scenario to the dignitary.
On a given signal at the end of his talk, the team, dressed for business in standard SBS assault gear and gas-masks, would smash open a door, dump flash-crash as they charged into the room, and unleash a barrage of live machine-gun bullets into the terrorist dummies, leaving the hostage/instructor untouched. This always impressed the visitor who, wearing ear-defenders and goggles to protect his eyes from any particles, was only inches from flying bullets. Sometimes a vase was placed close by the visitor and deliberately shot to bits to reinforce the realism.
On this occasion, Mudders, always keen to impress, decided to add a little extra. He manufactured several exploding caps taped to condoms filled with red ink which he placed under the shirts of the dummies. These were to be electrically fired from outside the room on the team’s entry.
The entry, which lasts barely seconds, went off perfectly on Mudders’ cue, and as soon as the terrorists were all shot, the cry ‘Room clear!’ went up and the assault team remained frozen in their final positions so that the general could see them when the smoke from the flash-crash cleared. Mudders remained in the centre of the room, facing the general and looking smug, but when the smoke cleared he realised with horror that he’d overdone it. The general, standing alone with his back to the wall in his dress uniform, was completely covered in red ink from head to foot. Mudders had obviously put far too much ink in the condoms. He himself had been out of the ‘splash zone’ where he stood alongside the terrorists. The general was unaware of his new paint job since the condoms had gone off at the same time as the flash-crash and the shock of the blasts had masked the impact of the flying liquid. When he took off his goggles as the smoke cleared, the skin around his eyes was the only part of his body not crimson. When he stepped away from the wall his silhouette was perfectly outlined on it. Mudders did not know what to say, but as the general was unaware of the situation he simply escorted him outside and into the fresh air, where the general’s staff and senior members of the SBS were waiting for him to review the rest of the SBS assault teams.
The general’s staff officers looked horrified at the state of him. Mudders could see his career flashing in front of his eyes. The staff decided not to tell their boss until later on. I don’t know how the general reacted when he found out, but to his credit he took it no further and Mudders hung on to his stripes.
13
Chasing and then climbing aboard huge tankers or cruise liners moving at speed has never been without its anxious moments, even though the process is relatively straightforward.
The general technique was for teams to chase down a ship in high-powered speedboats, climb the sides of the vessel from all directions and storm the superstructure while helicopters came in with support teams to recapture it. As in much of our work with boats, on the surface or below it with subs, probably the biggest danger was going through the propellers. I have personally witnessed three men on different occasions peel off the side of a fast-moving ship, either due to equipment failure, or from exhaustion. Each time, it was a nerve-racking moment waiting for that person to surface after disappearing under the moving vessel. I stood helpless and watched a friend get dragged under the arse-end of a moving supertanker after one end of his climbing rope uncoiled, dropped into the water and wrapped around the prop, while the other end of the rope was hooked to a climbing device around his foot. He surfaced only after having cut himself free from the line just in time. He said he could feel the proximity of the props.
I watched from a helicopter as the bows of a rigid raiding boat (a fibreglass boat that can take a dozen men) nudge the stern of a tanker while climbers were preparing. The tanker’s bow wave suddenly welled up and swamped over the front of the boat, literally sucking it down towards the props like some greedy beast as the men leapt out. There were so many near misses over the years, it was only a matter of time before an SBS operative went through a spinning propeller. The day it happened we almost lost three men.
Two SBS teams of four had just completed a parachute jump into the sea in rehearsal for an operation. A type 42 naval frigate was acting as the mother craft from which several rigid raiders and inflatables were dispatched to pick up the men and their chutes. An SAS sergeant from their boat troop, who was actually a former Royal Navy sailor, was acting as liaison between the ship’s captain and the crews picking the parachutists out of the water. One of the inflatable boats, which had just picked up three SBS parachutists, was at the stern of the frigate unloading their gear. The frigate was moving ahead slowly not far from the coastline, which bowed out in front of it several miles ahead. The frigate’s navigator indicated to the officer on watch that on their present course they would soon run out of sea.
It appears that, without consulting the SAS LO or any other SBS operatives on board or on the end of a radio, someone ordered the frigate to accelerate and change direction. Perhaps if the usual number of matelots had been on deck, one of them might have warned the bridge that boats were close to the frigate, but Germany was playing England at the time and most of the crew were inside watching the game.
Modern frigates, with their high-powered turbine engines, can accelerate very quickly. In seconds, the inflatable in the stern, along with the three operatives, was sucked under by the awesome force of the props. Several SBS men on board the frigate had been looking down at the inflatable at the time, helping with the unloading. It happened so quickly they couldn’t believe it. The inflatable immediately popped back up severely damaged, but there was no immediate sign of the three men. Somebody sprinted to the bridge screaming for them to stop engines while others ran along the sides of the ship and waited anxiously – there was nothing else they could do.
Although it was only seconds, it seemed an age before the first man broke the surface. Others leapt in to help him, but he was OK. A few seconds later, a second man surfaced. He was also uninjured. Both had somehow passed either side of the prop and it had missed them. It took several more seconds before the third man appeared, but it was obvious that he was in a serious condition. The sea was turning red all around him. He looked as if he’d been attacked by a shark. His legs were bent in places where there were no joints. More men immediately dived in to save him.
It is not yet clear whether he actually went through the prop or was slammed against the ‘A’ bracket that supports it. Some say if he had gone through the prop he would have been sliced up like a loaf of bread. Whichever it was, he broke both his femurs, his jaw, received deep lacerations to the head and required hundreds of stitches. Luckily he had been wearing a dry-bag, if not he might never have floated to the surface, at least not as soon as he did. After five months, he returned to the SBS for light duty and is expected to eventually make a full recovery and return to operational teams.
One of many delightful SBS cock-ups (there were countless of these, too numerous to mention) I had the pleasure of being present at occurred in the English Channel, and might have caused a minor international incident had we not escaped as quickly as we did.
There were twelve of us in a high-speed rib assault boat waiting for a certain Channel ferry to come by. The ribs were originally designed as sea-rescue craft but adapted for our use by adding more powerful engines – a set of 240 Mercury overboards. They were the first generation of our high-speed ship-assault craft. It had a solid fibreglass deck and inflatable sides and could do speeds of around 45 knots with twelve fully rigged operatives aboard. They were not the most comfortable of boats to travel in at speed. Men sat on the inflated sides facing inwards, sitting opposite each other. In heavy seas, the side-to-side jolting could cause kidney pains after an hour or so. But better, much, much faster boats were already in the wings.
To help practise our many techniques on a variety of vessels, we had an arrangement with several British ferry groups to use their boats for training purposes. We had the sailing schedule for their cargo ferries and intercepted them purely to practise our clandestine boarding techniques. The crews were warned not to over-react if they came across armed men in black climbing on board.
It was a lovely summer’s day and we were bobbing around on the calm waters with our engines turned off – the ferry was late. We were fully rigged in our black FRIS (fire retardant immersible suit) assault outfits, carrying weapons, and sitting on the deck with our heads resting back to catch a bit of sun. The young officer running the rehearsal kept checking the schedule and navigation aids and searching the horizon with his optics. We wondered if he had got the time and location right. It didn’t matter to us. It was a nice day to lounge around – one of those days when you wondered what the poor people were doing. Then a shout went up.
We sat up and stared at the speck in the distance, waiting until we were sure. Within a few minutes, we could make out the large, red ferry heading across our path towards Southampton. We hurried to prepare ourselves, zipping up suits, tightening straps, pulling on hoods and checking that all equipment was secure while the coxswain started up the powerful engines and gunned them till they were warm.
When all was ready and secure and we were sitting down the sides of the boat holding on to our support handles, the coxswain gradually accelerated to top speed. I leant into it as the boat got faster and faster, skimming across the water and bouncing gently over the few ripples. With each gentle bounce the engines gave a short shout as the prop left the resistance of the water for a fraction of a second. When there was a heavy swell, the boat left the water entirely, jumping from wave-top to wave-trough, the engines screaming longingly with each leap as the prop searched for water.
A large seagull appeared in front of us, flying a foot above the water. The coxswain needed to adjust his angle only a little to get in behind it. The seagull never ascended or veered away, and though it kept looking back at us with irritation, it remained on our course. He was huge, with a wing-span of five or six feet. We accelerated alongside it and it stayed with us for several hundred yards. I could almost reach out and touch its wing-tip.
We quickly closed on the back of the huge ferry and approached it hard and aggressively in preparation for a stern assault.
It was some forty feet from the water up to the stern rail. As we closed on the stern, we jumped the ship’s bow wave as it grew from the corner and slowed to maintain pace with the port stern quarter. We never paused to check the security of the climb, always leaping right into it. He who hesitates is lost (in anti-terrorism at least) and we applied that philosophy to every aspect of our work.