From award-winning historian Saul David, the first authorised history of the SBS.

Britain’s SBS – or Special Boat Section – was the world’s first maritime special operations unit. Founded in the dark days of 1940, it started as a small and inexperienced outfit that leaned heavily on volunteers’ raw courage and boyish enthusiasm.

It would become one of the most effective fighting forces of the Second World War – and has served as a model for Special Forces ever since.

Its first mission was a daring beach reconnaissance of Rhodes in the spring of 1941. Over the next four years, the SBS and its affiliates would carry out many more spectacular operations in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Channel and the Far East: they included the destruction of enemy ships, railways and bridges; the rescue of fugitive Allied soldiers; the support of Commando operations; the survey of coastal landing zones in North Africa, Italy and France; and the use of midget submarines to signpost the Normandy beaches on D-Day.

Using new material from multiple archives (including the secret SBS archives in Poole), this book is the first authoritative history of Britain’s maritime special operations. Very much a human tale, it concentrates on the key personalities and the daredevil missions they undertook. It is an authorized history - the first time the SBS Regimental Association has given its seal of approval to any book about the Unit’s past activities – but not an official one.

What the SBS and its affiliated units were able to achieve in four years of warfare is nothing less than extraordinary. At no time did these units individually number more than a hundred officers and men. Yet these small ‘Bands of Brothers’ were able to take part in scores of planned operations from submarines, surface craft and other means of transport, as well as carry out numerous minor reconnaissance trips and fighting patrols behind enemy lines. Their missions – accomplished by a handful of brave and determined men, paddling flimsy canoes, and armed only with knives, pistols and a few sub machine guns – were some of the most audacious and legendary of the war.