In December of 1942, 10 Royal Marines climbed out of a submarine hatch into the freezing black waters of the Bay of Bisque. They were carrying folding kayaks, limpit mines, and enough food for 5 days. Their mission was to paddle 70 m up a river controlled by the Germans, attach explosives to enemy cargo ships [music] in the port of Bordeaux, and then escape overland through occupied France into Spain.

 Of the 10 men who launched that night, only two would survive. Six were captured and executed by the Germans. Two died of hypothermia in the water. But those two survivors accomplished something that bombers, battleships, and thousands of conventional troops could not. Winston Churchill would later say their mission shortened the entire war by 6 months.

They were not SAS. They were Britain’s other special forces unit, the one almost nobody talks about. the Special Boat Service. To understand why the SPS became the most feared underwater operators in military history, you have to go back to the summer of 1940. Britain had just been humiliated [music] at Dunkirk. The army was shattered.

Equipment was abandoned across the beaches of France. A commando officer named Roger Courtourtney had an idea that his superiors thought was completely insane. If you are into stories like this, the operations that were so dangerous most people never even heard about, consider liking the video and subscribing.

 It helps more than you think. Courtney believed that small teams of men in canoes could infiltrate enemy harbors, sabotage ships, and gather intelligence in ways that conventional forces never could. The problem was that nobody in the admiral took him seriously. So Courtney did what any reasonable person would do. He paddled a folding canoe out to a British warship, anchored in the Clyde, climbed aboard undetected, and wrote his name on the captain’s door.

 When the captain found that signature, the next morning, Courtney had made his point. If one man in a canoe could board a Royal Navy warship without being stopped, imagine what a train team could do to the enemy. The special boat section was born, and the men who volunteered for it were about to discover just how dangerous their new job would be.

 The unit’s first operations were raids across the Mediterranean. Small teams would launch from submarines, paddle to enemy held islands in the Aian and attack German garrisons under cover of darkness. They blew up radio stations, ambushed patrols, and gathered intelligence on fortifications that would prove critical for Allied planning.

 But it was Operation Frankton that cemented the reputation of the SPS as men willing to attempt the [music] impossible. Major Herbert Blondie Hassler designed the mission himself. The target was Bordeaux, one of Germany’s most important ports for shipping raw materials from the Far East, rubber, animal oils, and metals.

 All of it fueling the Nazi war machine. Allied bombers could not hit the port without destroying the city. A naval assault would be suicide against the harbor defenses. So Hassler proposed something no one had tried before. sent 12 men in six collapsible kayaks launched from a submarine at the mouth of the Giron estuary to paddle upstream for five consecutive nights hiding on the river banks during daylight hours and then plant limpit mines on the cargo ships in the harbor.

 The kayaks were cenamed after sea creatures, catfish, [music] crayfish, coalish, cashalo, conger and cuttlefish. Each one carried two men, weapons, [music] rations, water, and eight magnetic mines. The total safe load for each craft was 480 lb in a canvas-sided boat just 15 ft long. On the night of December 7th, 1942, the submarine [music] HMS Tuna surfaced off the French coast.

The seas were brutal. Waves were crashing in at over 5 m. The first kayak, Cashelo, was damaged during the launch and never made it off the submarine. Its two crew members stayed behind. That left 10 men in five boats. Within hours, disaster struck again. Conger capsized in the tidal overfalls. Its two crew members, Marine Sherid and Muffat, vanished into the freezing Atlantic.

 Their bodies would wash ashore days later. They had died of hypothermia. Two more kayaks, Calfish and Cuttlefish, became separated from the group and were forced ashore. All four of those men were captured by the Germans under Hitler’s commando order, which demanded that all captured commandos be executed without trial. Every one of them was shot.

 That left four men in two kayaks, Hassler and Marine Bill Sparks and Catfish, Corporal Albert Lever and Marine William Mills and Crayfish. Four men against an entire port controlled by the Germans. For five nights, they paddled [music] in total darkness, navigating tidal currents that could flip a kayak in seconds, dodging the 32 German Navy vessels patrolling the estuary.

 During the day, they pulled their boats onto isolated stretches of riverbank and hid under camouflage nets, lying motionless for hours while German patrols passed within meters. On the night of December 11th, they reached Bordeaux. Working in absolute silence, the four Marines attached limpit mines to the hulls of German cargo ships.

 The mines were set with delayed fuses. By the time they detonated the next morning, all four men had abandoned the their kayaks and begun the long escape overland through occupied France. [music] Lever and Mills were captured days later. Both were executed. Hler and Sparks made it. With help from the French resistance, they crossed into Spain and eventually returned to Britain.

 Two survivors from a mission that started with 13 men. The physical damage to the port was relatively contained. Several ships sank a few feet in shallow water and were eventually repaired. But the psychological impact was enormous. The Germans had no idea how the attack had been carried out. And the knowledge that British commandos could reach a heavily defended port 70 mi up a river using nothing but kayaks forced them to divert thousands of troops to coastal defense duties across occupied Europe.

 That was what the Special Boat Service did. They created fear out of proportion to their numbers. But if Operation Frankton showed what the Special Boat Service SBS could endure, a Danish volunteer named Anders Lassen showed what it could inflict. Lassen arrived in Britain as a merchant seaman in 1940. Barely 20 years old, burning with hatred for the Nazi occupation of his homeland.

The special operations executive recruited him, judged his personality too aggressive for covert spying, and sent him to the commandos instead. He ended up in the SBS, where his temperament was exactly what they needed. Over the next four years, Lassen became the most decorated and arguably the most lethal special forces operator of the Second World War.

 He raided German garrisons across the Greek islands, including Santorini, Cree, and Knos. His commanding officer, the Earl Jelico, would later call him the finest soldier he ever knew. Another senior officer said Lassen caused more damage to the enemy than any other man of his rank or age. By 24, Lassen had earned three military crosses.

 His colleagues called him the terrible Viking. He was known for leading raids from the front. Armed with a pistol and grenades, moving through German positions with a speed and violence that left garrisons convinced they were under attack by a much larger force. But Lassen’s war ended on the night of April 8th, 1945 at Lake Kamakio in northern Italy, just weeks before the German surrender.

 He was ordered to lead 18 SAS men across the lake to raid German positions on the Northshore. The goal was to simulate a major amphibious landing and draw defenders away from the Argenta Gap, where the main Allied advance would push through. There was no time for reconnaissance. The patrol found itself on a narrow road flanked by water on both sides advancing toward the town of Kamakio in total darkness.

 When a German century challenged them, Lassen told his men to say they were fishermen heading home. The deception failed. Machine gun fire erupted from a fortified position. Lassen charged forward with grenades, destroying the position and killing its defenders. A second machine gun opened up from another strong point.

 Lassen attacked that one too, then a third. By the time he reached the third position, he had been hit multiple times. As he approached what appeared to be a surrendering enemy, a burst of machine gun fire struck him. He fell on the narrow causeway between the lake and the Adriatic Sea. His men wanted to carry him out. Lassen refused.

 He knew that evacuating a wounded man under fire on that exposed road would get more of his soldiers killed. He ordered them to withdraw and complete [music] the mission. Anders Lassen died there on a causeway in Italy on the fifth anniversary of the Nazi invasion of his homeland. He was postumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest British military honor.

 To this day, he remains the only member of the SAS or the SBS ever to receive it. If you’re finding this useful, hit subscribe. I cover military history and special forces operations every week. Now, what made the SBS fundamentally different from the SAS [music] was not courage. Both units had plenty of that. It was what happened during selection and training.

 To join either the SAS or the SBS, candidates must pass joint special forces selection, the same brutal course held twice a year in the Breen Beacons of Wales. Ruck marches with loads up to 175 pounds. Sleep deprivation, navigation exercises that push men to the edge of physical collapse. Typically, fewer than 10% of candidates pass.

 But here is where the paths diverge. For SAS candidates, passing that course means they are in. For SBS candidates, passing joint selection is only the [music] beginning. They must then complete the swimmer canist third class called SC3. It is eight weeks of specialist maritime training and it has its own brutal attrition rate.

 SC3 covers long-distance diving in zero visibility and freezing water using closed circuit rebreathers. These devices recycle exhaled air through a carbon dioxide scrubbing chemical. When a rebreather leaks, and they do leak, seawater mixes with the carbon dioxide absorbent and creates a costic soda cocktail. One former SBS operator described it as drinking fizzy antireeze.

 You choke, you cannot breathe, and you have to claw your way to the surface while remembering to exhale on the way up to avoid an embolism. Candidates canoe for miles in open ocean. They swim through half- frozen lakes. They learn underwater demolitions, submarine exit and re-entry procedures, and beach reconnaissance techniques that require precise measurement of seabed gradients while remaining completely invisible to the shore.

 The SAS operates brilliantly on land. The SPS can do everything the SAS does and then disappear beneath the waterline. That additional capability is what made them uniquely dangerous, and they proved it in conflict [music] after conflict. In April 1982, when Argentina invaded the Faulland Islands, the SBS were among the first British forces deployed.

 Weeks before the main task force arrived, SPS reconnaissance teams were inserted onto the islands by submarine to scout Argentine positions. [music] They lay hidden in freezing observation posts for days, reporting troop movements, mapping minefields, and identifying landing sites. On the night before the main British amphibious landings at San Carlos Bay, it was SBS operators who cleared the area of enemy troops, ensuring that thousands of Royal Marines and paras could come ashore without walking into an ambush.

Around South Georgia, SPS units operated from submarines in Antarctic waters, conducting coastal surveys in conditions so hostile that the SAS mountain troop had already been defeated by the weather on Fortuna Glacier, requiring emergency helicopter extraction. The Faullands also produced one of the darkest moments in SPS history.

 On the night of June 2nd, an SPS patrol strayed into an area designated for the SAS. In the darkness, the SAS mistook the SBS men for Argentine forces and opened fire. Sergeant Ian Hunt of the SBS was killed. The tragedy was a gut punch to both units, but it forced something important. After Hunt’s death, the SAS and the SPS were compelled to build tighter coordination procedures, communication protocols, and mutual respect.

 In the years that followed, the SPS deployed to every major British operation. During the first Gulf War in 1991, 36 SPS operators were flown by two Shinook helicopters into the Iraqi Desert just 32 mi from Baghdad. Their target was a junction point in Iraq’s fiber optic communications network. The SBS team avoided Iraqi ground forces, spies, and nomads, located the cable, and destroyed a 40yard section with explosives.

 They effectively cut off what remained of Saddam Hussein’s ability to communicate with his forces in the field. At the same time, other SPS teams conducted diversionary raids along the Kuwaiti coastline, making it appear that a major amphibious assault was imminent. The deception worked. Iraqi commanders diverted entire divisions to defend beaches that were never actually attacked, weakening their positions along the real axis of advance.

 In 2003, the SBS returned to Iraq. This time, they combined with United States Navy Seals to scout and secure the beaches on the Alfa Peninsula ahead of the main British amphibious landings. Other SPS teams captured nearby oil fields around Basra, preventing the retreating Iraqi forces from setting them ablaze. But it was in Afghanistan where the modern SPS proved that its reputation was not just historical legend.

 In Kabell, SPS operators and Afghan troops responded to a heavily armed insurgent suicide squad that had occupied a half-built sixstory tower block. The militants were firing small arms and rocket propelled grenades at nearby buildings, including the British and German embassies. What followed was an 8 and 1/2 hour close quarters battle.

 The SBS and their Afghan partners fighting their way up the tower, floor by floor, room by room. During the assault, a Belgian Malininoa combat assault dog named Molly [music] stayed by his handler’s side despite being badly wounded by grenade shrapnel. Molly continued to find safe routes through the building, preventing the operators from walking into booby traps that could have caused catastrophic casualties.

 Mali was later awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross. The Cabbell Tower siege became one of the most decorated actions of Britain’s entire involvement in Afghanistan. [music] Multiple gallantry awards were given to the SBS operators who fought that night. The SAS carried out the Iranian embassy siege in 1980, broadcast live on television around the world.

 The SBS carried out the missions that were never filmed, never announced, and in many cases remain classified decades later. That is not a coincidence. The SBS motto is by strength and guile. And the guile part is about operating so far in the shadows that the public never even knows you were there.

 The SAS proved that elite soldiers could storm a building in front of the cameras and change the world’s perception of special forces [music] forever. The SBS proved something quieter, but arguably more unsettling. That men could emerge from the ocean in total darkness, accomplish their mission beneath the surface or on the shoreline, [music] and vanish again before anyone knew they had arrived.

 The difference between the two units was never about who was tougher. It was about what they were willing to do in environments where most human beings cannot survive. and underwater in the freezing dark with a leaking rebreather and a mission that no one would ever hear about. The SPS had no equal. Subscribe for more stories from the world of special forces.