The 1st New Zealand Special Air Service Regiment, abbreviated as 1 NZSAS Regt, is the special forces unit of the New Zealand Army, closely modelled on the British Special Air Service (SAS). It was formed on 7 July 1955. It traces its origins to the Second World War and the famous Long Range Desert Group that New Zealanders served with.
Filip Konowal VC was a highly decorated Ukrainian Canadian soldier. He is the first Canadian Corps member not born in the British Empire to be awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy given to British and Commonwealth forces. He was also entitled to the Cross of St George, 4th Class.
The Royal Irish Rangers was a regular infantry regiment of the British Army with a relatively short existence, formed in 1968 and later merged with the Ulster Defence Regiment in 1992 to form the Royal Irish Regiment.
The Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces are the Royal Army of Oman, Royal Navy of Oman, Royal Air Force of Oman, Sultan's Special Force and other defense forces of the Sultanate of Oman. Since their formal establishment in the early 1950s, with British assistance SAF has twice overcome insurgencies which have threatened the integrity or social structure of the state, and more recently have contributed contingents or facilities to coalitions formed to protect Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
The BAC 167 Strikemaster is a British jet-powered training and light attack aircraft. It was a development of the Hunting Jet Provost trainer, itself a jet engined version of the Percival Provost, which originally flew in 1950 with a radial piston engine.
The Dhofar War took place from 1963 to 1976 in the province of Dhofar against the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman. The war began with the formation of the Dhofar Liberation Front, a Marxist group which aimed to create an independent state in Dhofar, free from the rule of the Omani Sultan Said bin Taimur. The rebels also held the broader goals of Arab nationalism which included ending British influence in the Persian Gulf region. Omani and British goals, on the other hand, were to safeguard Oman from communism and halt the spread of communist ideology as part of the broader Cold War.
Talaiasi Labalaba BEM was a British-Fijian sergeant in the SAS who was involved in the Battle of Mirbat on 19 July 1972. Labalaba initially served in the British Army in the Royal Ulster Rifles.
Do Ab is a village in Bamiyan Province in central Afghanistan. It is located in a pass in a mountainous region North East of Barmiyan town on the Ghandak highway 10 km from the border with Baghlan Province. It has a bazaar, a coal weigh station built in 2007 and a police check point. Do Abe is the centre of a coal mining industry that employed manual methods to extract coal from shafts in sacks. Coal seams visible on the surface are followed deep underground. The shaft roof is unsupported so accidents are common. From 2009/10 a contract was to be let to a Chinese coal mining group to extract the coal using mechanized equipment. Prior to the establishment of the weigh station coal smuggling across the border into Baghan province was rife. Kiwi 5 patrol of the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team spent time in Do Abe in 2008 training the ANP in order to stop coal smuggling. This area is subject to attacks by roadside bombs. It was near Do Ab, close to the Ish Pesta ANP check point that a New Zealand soldier was later killed in a roadside bomb blast. After the IED exploded the 3 vehicles were attacked by RPGs and automatic gun fire. This led to a combined NZ/US attack on the Taliban group responsible that resulted in 13 terrorists being killed.
The Trucial Oman Scouts was a paramilitary force that the British raised in 1951 as the Trucial Oman Levies, to serve in the Trucial States. In 1956, the Levies were renamed the Trucial Oman Scouts. In 1971, upon the formation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the scouts were handed to the United Arab Emirate's government and formed its Federal Union Defence Force (UDF) which is today renamed as the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces.
Major Michael John Anthony Kealy, was a British Army officer who served in the Special Air Service and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his role in the Battle of Mirbat in 1972. Kealy was the commander of a nine-member SAS squad, which came under attack from hundreds of Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf guerillas during the Dhofar Rebellion in Oman.
The Battle of Mount Kent was a series of engagements during the Falklands War, primarily between British and Argentine special forces.
The Feather Men is a 1991 novel by the British adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The book was initially published on 17 October 1991 by Bloomsbury Publishing. In 2011 it was loosely adapted into the film Killer Elite.
The Flagstaff Hill incident was an international incident between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. It took place on the night of 5/6 May 1976 near Cornamucklagh, a townland just inside the Cooley Peninsula in the north of County Louth in the Republic of Ireland, when the Irish Army and Garda Síochána arrested eight British Special Air Service soldiers who had illegally crossed the Irish border.
Operation Simba, and the subsequent fighting around high ground near Sarfait, was the longest running conflict of the Dhofar Rebellion. On 17 April 1972, a battalion of the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces (SAF) landed by helicopter to establish a position on a dominating ridge at Sarfait, near the border with the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). The aim was to interdict the supply lines used by the guerillas of the PFLOAG from the PDRY to the interior of Dhofar, which ran along the narrow coastal plain beneath the foot of the escarpment at the southern end of the ridge.
Late on 22 December 1972, a troop from the Rhodesian Special Air Service, followed shortly by the Rhodesian Light Infantry, reported to the police station in Centenary. The land mine in Altena's driveway was discovered, disarmed and removed. For their own safety, Marc de Borchgrave and his family were sent to Whistlefield Farm, which was owned by Archie Dalgluish and his family, while their family home was being repaired.
The Special Air Service (SAS), along with men from the Special Boat Squadron (SBS), attempted to carry out a diversionary amphibious raid on Port Stanley Harbour on the east coast of East Falkland island on the night of 13–14 June 1982. The plan was, as 2 PARA attacked Wireless Ridge, four Rigid Raider fast landing crafts and carrying some 30 SAS soldiers from D Squadron and six SBS reinforcements from 3 section, would travel across the harbour and destroy the oil storage facilities on Cortley Ridge.
The siege of the Salamanca forts saw an 800-man Imperial French garrison directed by Lieutenant Colonel Duchemin defend three fortified convents in the city of Salamanca against the 48,000-strong Allied army led by Arthur Wellesley, Lord Wellington. During this time, the French commander Marshal Auguste de Marmont led a 40,000-man French army in an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the garrison. An Allied failure to bring sufficient artillery ammunition caused the siege to be prolonged. The garrison repulsed a premature British attempt to storm the fortified convents on 23 June, but finally surrendered four days later after an artillery bombardment breached one fort and set another one on fire. During his maneuvering, Marmont formed the idea that Wellington was only willing to act on the defensive. This mistaken notion would contribute to Marmont's defeat at the Battle of Salamanca a month later.
The following is a Timeline of British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) undercover operations during Operation Banner during the 1969 – 1998 Northern Irish conflict in Northern Ireland that resulted in death or injury. Including operations by the SAS, 14 Intelligence Company, the Military Reaction Force (MRF), RUC Special Patrol Group and Special Branch.
The 2007 New Zealand gallantry awards were announced via a Special Honours List on 2 July 2007, and recognised four New Zealand military personnel for actions while serving in Afghanistan in 2004. The identities of three of the four award recipients were not released for operational security reasons. Willie Apiata was awarded the Victoria Cross for New Zealand, the first and so far only time the decoration has been awarded since its inception in 1999.
United Kingdom 
Oman 
PFLOAG 
