At 0230 hours on July 27th, 1942, Major David Sterling watched runway lights flicker on across Sidihan airfield. 18 jeeps, 58 men, 72 Vicar’s K machine guns capable of firing 950 rounds per minute. Between them and 37 parked Luftwaffer aircraft, nothing but 400 yd of open sand and a handful of German guards who had just turned on the landing lights for an incoming bomber.

 The mathematics were impossible. Airfields don’t fall to light vehicles. Yet in 15 minutes, this raid would destroy more German aircraft than entire RAF bombing squadrons had achieved in weeks and rewrite the doctrine of special operations warfare forever. The smell hit first, aviation fuel, hot metal baking under a full moon, the acrid bite of Egyptian dust.

Navigator Mike Sadler had guided the convoy 50 m through trackless desert without headlights using only stars and a compass, no roads, no landmarks, just mathematical precision across a sea of sand that had swallowed armies. The jeeps idled in formation, nine in each column, engines ticking, vicar’s guns loaded with tracer ammunition that would ignite fuel tanks on contact.

 Each jeep carried four guns, two forward- facing, two on swivel mounts. Total firepower 608400 rounds per minute if every gun fired simultaneously. The Germans, confident in 235 mi of desert between them and British lines, had stationed exactly zero heavy weapons on the perimeter. What Sterling didn’t know, General Feld Marshall Irwin RML’s supply crisis had reached critical mass.

70% of Axis supplies crossing the Mediterranean were being sunk by Royal Navy submarines. The Junkers J52 transports parked on City Hanes weren’t just aircraft. They were the jugular vein of the entire North African campaign. Each J52 could haul 2.5 tons of ammunition, medical supplies, and spare tank parts that couldn’t come by sea.

 RML had 96 operational tanks facing 300 British tanks at Elamagne, 40 mi east. The mathematics of attrition favored the British, unless Germany could supply faster than Britain, could destroy. Those transports represented weeks of production from Juna’s factories in Desau. 12 construction weeks per aircraft. 20 skilled workers per plane.

Replacement cost approximately 250,000 Reichs marks each. About 9 million Reichs marks worth of aviation assets sitting exposed under moonlight. But Sterling couldn’t calculate any of that from 400 yd away. He could only see the runway lights illuminate, watch a German Hankl bomber descend toward the strip, and make a decision in the span of three heartbeats.

 You’re watching history no one teaches. Not in schools, not in documentaries, not on streaming services. This channel exists because you subscribe. If this is the kind of history you want more of, clinical, precise, no propaganda, hit subscribe now. The SAS L Detachment Special Air Service Brigade had existed for exactly 11 months.

 Formed in July 1941 from the remnants of failed commando experiments, Sterling’s unit had lost 31 men on its first parachute operation. Sterling himself had fractured both legs when his chute failed to open during training. While recovering in a Cairo hospital bed, he’d written a doctrine on scrap paper. Small groups, deep penetration, high value targets, bypass the front entirely, strike airfields, supply dumps, headquarters, assets the enemy considered untouchable because of distance.

 The British high command considered him a nuisance until his raiders started destroying parked aircraft with demolition charges and timing fuses invented by Lieutenant Jock Lewis. Between November 1941 and July 1942, SES teams had destroyed 90 Axis aircraft on foot, infiltrating air bases at night, placing Lewis bombs, one pound of plastic explosive, thermite, and motor oil on engine cowlings and fuel tanks. But foot infiltration took hours.

Exposure time stretched across entire nights. One mistake, one alert guard, and the team faced encirclement with no escape route. Sterling needed speed. In June 1942, he acquired 12 Americanmade Willies jeeps, modified them with armored glass windscreens, and mounting brackets for Vicar’s K machine guns, weapons originally designed for RAF bombers with a cyclic rate of 200 rounds per minute.

 In some variants, the Vicar’s K fed by 100 round pan magazines, fired 303 British ammunition, the same round as infantry rifles, but in fully automatic sustained bursts. Tracer rounds, one in every five, burned magnesium on contact with fuel or fabric, turning bullets into ignition sources. The tactical mathematics were brutal. Four guns per jeep.

 18 jeeps equals 72 guns. At 950 rounds per minute conservative estimate, that’s 60 400 rounds per minute across the formation. A due 52’s fuel tank held 2,200 L of aviation gasoline. Puncture rate didn’t matter. Tracer rounds would ignite vapor before the tank even ruptured fully. Messmid BF 109 fighters used self-sealing tanks, but only on the main cells.

 Auxiliary tanks and fuel lines remained vulnerable. Junker’s U87Stooka dive bombers parked with full ordinance loads would chain react if ammunition stores detonated. Sterling fired a green flare. 18 jeeps lurched forward in a V formation. Nine on the left flank, nine on the right. Sterling at the apex. The lead vehicles crossed the airfield perimeter at 40 mph.

Engines screaming, vicar’s guns opening fire before German ground crews understood what they were seeing. The sound was apocalyptic. 72 machine guns firing simultaneously produce 140 dB, louder than a jet engine at 100 ft. Tracer rounds arked across the tarmac in streams of light, thousands per minute, converging on parked aircraft. The JU52s went first.

Fabric covered control surfaces ignited instantly. Aluminum fuselages thin as soda cans in some sections shredded under boy 303 impacts. The first transport exploded 8 seconds into the raid when tracers found its fuel tank. The shockwave shattered windows in the control tower 300 yd away. German and Italian gunners scrambled to anti-aircraft positions, but the doctrine was wrong.

 Flack guns pointed skyward, designed for bombers at 10,000 ft, not jeeps at ground level, moving 40 mph in unpredictable patterns. MG34 machine gun teams fired blind into the chaos, aiming at muzzle flashes and engine noise. One Jeep took hits in the engine block and stalled. Lance Bombardier John Robson, 21 years old from Yorkshire, kept firing his vicar’s gun as the vehicle ground to a halt.

 A German machine gun burst caught him in the chest. He died manning his weapon, the only Allied casualty during the raid itself. What the Germans didn’t know and couldn’t have known was that the SAS had spent months perfecting a hit and run doctrine that treated speed as armor, treating firepower concentration as the primary objective, allowing British raiders to strike before the enemy could organize a defense.

 This is because the side that strikes first in a raid doesn’t win the battle. They decide whether there will be one. Captain Paddyy Maine, commanding the second column, spotted a bomber with its engine cowling open. He stopped his jeep, dismounted, placed a Lewis bomb inside the exposed engine, and climbed back aboard as his driver accelerated.

 The bomb detonated 90 seconds later, sending the bombers’s propeller spinning 50 yard across the sand. If you believe these men deserve to be remembered, not as propaganda, but as they were, subscribe. These stories don’t tell themselves. 15 minutes. That’s how long the raid lasted from first contact to final withdrawal. In those 15 minutes, 37 Luftvafa aircraft were destroyed or damaged beyond field repair.

 The raiders expended an estimated 50,000 rounds of 303 ammunition, 680 kg of lead and brass scattered across 200 yds of airfield. The Germans and Italians fired back with everything available, small arms, machine guns, even an anti-aircraft gun crew that managed to depress their barrel low enough to fire horizontally. They hit three jeeps.

 One burst into flames immediately. The crew bailed and piled into a trailing vehicle. The second took engine damage but limped away. The third Robson’s jeep was abandoned. Sterling ordered withdrawal at 0245 hours. The jeep scattered into the desert in groups of 3 to five vehicles navigating by stars and Mike Sadler’s compass bearings.

German doctrine said pursuit at night was suicide. Vehicles driving without headlights through desert terrain risked collision, breakdown, or simply getting lost and running out of fuel 100 miles from anywhere. The SE knew this. Sterling had calculated fuel consumption down to the gallon.

 Each jeep carried 20 gall in the main tank plus two 5gallon jerry cans. Fuel consumption at cruising speed 6 m per gallon. Distance to the rendevu at Beer El Cusier, 50 mi. They had margin for error but not much. The French SAS detachment three jeeps commanded by aspirant Andre Zernheld took a different route. Punctured tires and mechanical failures slowed them.

When dawn broke at 0530 hours, they were still exposed 30 mi from safety. Four Ju7 Stooker dive bombers found them at 6:15. The Stookers made nine attack runs, firing 20 mm cannons and dropping 50 kg bombs. The French scattered their vehicles and returned fire with Vicar’s guns, hitting one and forcing it to break off, but Zernheld, 26 years old, took cannon fire to the chest and abdomen.

 He bled out in the sand 20 minutes later. The surviving French commandos piled into the one remaining operational jeep and reached Beer El Cusier at 11 hours 7 hours late. Delirious from heat and dehydration. 15 of the original 18 jeeps returned. 56 of 58 men, two killed, Robson during the raid, Zernheld during the withdrawal. The exchange rate 37 German aircraft for two allied soldiers and three vehicles.

Now let me tell you what the mathematics of city hes tells. The 37 aircraft destroyed at city hanes represented more than hardware. Each J52 transport could fly three supply runs per day between cit and north Africa. 700 tons of cargocapacity per week across the formation destroyed.

 RML’s forces required 1 1500 tons of supplies daily just to maintain defensive positions. Every transport destroyed added hours to replacement timelines. Yners factories in Germany produced 50 due 52s per month across all assembly lines. Meaning Sidihan wiped out 75% of one month’s production in 15 minutes. But the deeper impact was doctrinal.

 The Germans reacted by diverting infantry units from frontline positions to guard rear area installations. Every airfield within 200 m of the front received reinforced security. machine gun nests, sandbag imp placements, roving patrols, search lights. This defensive reallocation pulled approximately 2,000 combat troops away from RML’s main force at precisely the moment General Bernard Montgomery was massing British armor for a counter offensive at Elamagne.

The Germans also grounded aircraft during full moons, eliminating night operations, which reduced their own supply flights by 40% during optimal flying conditions. The allies noticed. Winston Churchill, whose son Randolph had accompanied an earlier SAS raid, received Sterling’s afteraction report within 72 hours.

 Churchill scribbled in the margin, “This is the sort of vigor we need.” Sterling received promotion to lieutenant colonel and authorization to expand L detachment to full regimental strength 560 men. The SAS budget increased 10fold. More jeeps, more weapons, more raids. What the Germans didn’t know, Mike Sadler, the navigator, had made this possible.

 Desert navigation in 1942 relied on sun compasses during the day and star fixes at night. No GPS, no radio beacons. Sadler used a Theodolite, a surveying instrument accurate to one degree of arc combined with celestial navigation tables and dead reckoning. He calculated vehicle drift from wind adjusted for magnetic variation and compensated for aometer error caused by tire slippage in sand.

 Over 50 m of trackless desert, his navigation error was less than 200 y. The convoy arrived at City Hanesh within 3 minutes of scheduled time. Without Saddler’s precision, the raid would have missed the airfield entirely and 18 jeeps would have been stranded in the desert at dawn, easy targets for Luftwaffer fighters. The raids long-term mathematics altered the entire North African campaign.

Between July and November 1942, SAS Jeep raids destroyed an additional 150 Axis aircraft across 12 separate operations. RML’s supply situation deteriorated from critical to catastrophic. By October 1942, German forces at Elamagne were rationed to 1/3 normal fuel allocations. Tanks sat immobile for lack of gasoline.

Artillery batteries fired half the normal bombardment rates to conserve ammunition. When Montgomery launched Operation Lightfoot on October 23rd, RML’s Panza army had 96 operational tanks, 500 artillery pieces, and enough fuel for 3 days of defensive combat. The British fielded 1,000 tanks, 2,000 guns, and full supply lines stretching back to Alexandria.

The second battle of Elmagne ended with Axis forces in full retreat, abandoning Libya entirely by November 1942. The SAS didn’t win Elmagne, but they changed the mathematics. Every aircraft destroyed added hours to German supply timelines. Every diverted infantry battalion weakened RML’s front.

 Every grounded transport during full moons reduced cargo tonnage. small actions, compounding interest, strategic leverage. 58 men in 18 jeeps destroyed assets worth 9 million Reich marks and forced the enemy to redeploy 2,000 soldiers to guard against future raids. The doctrine spread by the 1943 SE style units operated in Italy, France, and Greece.

 The US Army created its own version, the Office of Strategic Services Operational Groups. The Soviets deployed long-range reconnaissance battalions behind German lines in Ukraine. Jeep mounted raids with automatic weapons became standard special operations procedure through the Cold War and into modern conflicts. David Sterling was captured by Germans in January 1943 during a raid in Tunisia.

He spent the rest of the war in Italian and German P camps including Culitz Castle. Hitler’s commando order issued October 1942 mandated immediate execution of all captured special forces. Sterling survived only because Field Marshall Raml, the one German commander who ignored the order, had already left North Africa.

RML later stated in capture documents that the SAS caused more damage to the German war effort than any other British unit of equivalent size. Patty Maine took over SAS command after Sterling’s capture. He led the regiment through the Italian campaign and D-Day operations, personally destroying 130 additional Axis aircraft before wars end.

 He received four distinguished service orders, the only person in British history to earn that many. Maine died in a car accident in Northern Ireland in 1955, age 40. Mike Sadler survived the war, remained in the SAS through the 1950s, and became the last living member of the original Ldetachment. He died January 4th, 2024 at age 103.

 In interviews, he described the Sidihanes raid as mathematically perfect. We arrived exactly when and where we needed to be and left before the enemy could respond. That’s all special operations are. Mathematics and Audacity. The mathematics of Sidi Hanesh. 18 jeeps, 72 machine guns, 50,000 rounds fired, 37 aircraft destroyed, 15 minutes elapsed time, 50 mi navigation error, less than 200 yd, two men killed, 9 million Reich marks in enemy losses, 2,000 German troops redeployed, 40% reduction in Luftwaffer night operations, 75% of 1 month’s due 52

production eliminated. The exchange rate, $4.5 million in enemy losses per Allied casualty measured in 1942. If this stayed with you, press like. In one word, tell us what this was. Subscribe. Because when history stops being examined, it turns into myth. But the airfield at City Hanes still exists. Modern satellite imagery shows the original runways now crumbling concrete overtaken by sand.

 The German control tower collapsed in the 1960s. No monument marks the site. Egyptian authorities list it as abandoned military installation circa 1942. But in July each year, a few dozen people, relatives of SAS veterans, military historians, special forces personnel from Britain, France, and the United States, gather at the coordinates 31 945 N 27 to 3738.

They pour 18 small glasses of whiskey into the sand, one for each jeep. They read two names, John Robson, Andre Zernheld, and they measure 200 yd from the old runway threshold to the spot where Mike Sadler’s navigation brought the convoy to within 3 minutes of schedule, cross 50 mi of trackless desert under a full moon 82 years ago.

The raid lasted 15 minutes. The strategic consequences lasted until Germany surrendered North Africa. The doctrinal changes lasted until today. Every special forces unit in the world studies city hes speed, surprise, firepower, concentration, precision navigation, and withdrawal before the enemy adapts. The mathematics haven’t changed.

 Force multiplication through training, innovation, and calculated audacity. 58 men against an airfield. Impossible odds until someone calculates the actual math. 72 guns versus thin skinned aircraft, 15 minutes versus German reaction time, 200yd navigation error versus 400y standoff distance. The numbers worked barely.

 That’s what makes it worth remembering.