Special Boat Service

"Not by strength, by guile"

The SBS was formed in 1940 and with its headquarters in Poole, Dorset. Like the SAS, the SBS originated during the second world war in North Africa and the Mediterranean. They were formerly known as the Special Boat Squadron (SBS), now renamed the Special Boat Service. The unit's origins can be dated to World War II, when various groups within the Armed Forces dealt with the sabotage of merchant ships in the Mediterranean.

The SBS is secretive, with no public media exposure like that which followed the SAS raid on the Iranian embassy in London, but in 1972 the service was in the spotlight for after parachuting SBS troops onto the QEII in the mid-Atlantic in response to a bomb threat. The event formed the basis for a movie called Assault Force in 1980.

Divided into three squadrons (C, M, and S Squadron.) with an estimated total of 250 to 300 personnel, SBS soldiers have specialised training in a variety of water-borne and anti-terrorist operations.The unit's motto: "Not by strength, by guile" is a clue to the training needed for SBS soldiers. C Squadron is responsible for swimmer and canoe operations, M Squadron is responsible for maritime anti-terrorism and ship boarding operations and S Squadron specialises in small water borne craft and mini-sub operations. Within M Squadron is the small Black Group, the counter-terrorist team that uses helicopter-borne assaults. But its role remains closely linked with that of the SAS with many of its members reporting to the same chain of command.

Their signalling and intelligence gathering skills are also likely to prove vital to the coalition operation. One of their most high profile operations was the liberation of the British Embassy in Kuwait, at the end of the Gulf War. Among their roles has been the protction of North Sea oil rigs and the fight against the drugs trade. They are typically used in any stealth attack from water, but are also trained for parachuting and high-speed rope deployments from helicopters. Since its inception, the SBS has been involved in most conflicts that have required the use of British military troops, including Korea, the Suez canal, the Indonesian crisis, Northern Ireland and the Falklands war.

Today's SBS operator is a highly trained swimmer/canoeist and parachutist capable of performing a variety of missions. In the South Atlantic in 1982, 2 SBS were involved in the re-capture of South Georgia and 6 SBS provided some of the first reconnaissance teams to land on East Falkland. After placing reconnaissance/surveillance patrols to cover the landings at San Carlos, SBS teams took part in the preparation to the raid on Pebble Island air base, and even managed to infiltrate the old wreck of the Lady Elizabeth in Stanley Harbour. From their cold, damp vantage point, the patrol. The SBS are also winter warfare specialists, like all marines, a trait that will be well-suited to the conditions over the coming months in Afghanistan.

Selection

The SBS selection is based in the Royal Marines Poole, half a mile away from Poole Harbour.  Members of the Royal Marines are chosen to join the elite band of SBS members only after a gruelling physical and mental selection process. The royal marines' recruitment site warns: "You must become an expert in swimming, diving, parachuting, navigation, demolition and, of course, reconnaissance. Great stamina and resourcefulness are needed and only the most resilient succeed." 

The first thing that one will notice (or will be surprised) is the lax security around a camp that housed such a secret organisation as the SBS. It was invisible. The SBS protected themselves with the most effective security system there was. Anonymity. Unlike the SAS, the SBS wore exactly the same uniform and cap as regular Royal Marines and could not be told apart. And they shared the large camp with several other regular Marine departments such as Driver Training, Ships Detachment courses, R Company, which was responsible for recruiting and laying on display all over the country, Landing Craft Company, Royal Navy ranks and several other smaller departments and schools which altogether consisted of several hundred non-SBS ranks and their structures.  It was a  impressive  deliberate ploy - the SBS's covert existence hidden within the overt structure of the Royal Marines and Navy. 

It was rumoured that the selection course had a passing-rate of only one in sixteen. Pinned on a window-frame, partially hidden by the curtain, was a photograph of three course members climbing into a landing craft, having just completed a gruelling survival exercise on Little Cumbria Island in the wilds of Scotland. They had been stripped naked, then dumped on the island with nothing but a pile of hessian cloth to make cloths from. they lived off seagulls and their eggs, kelp, rabbits, if they could find a way to snare them, and vegetation they had been taught was nutritious. Every waking hour was spent in the pursuit of food and firewood and by the end of the week they looked pale and feeble.

The SBS acquaint, designed to weed out the obvious no-hopers before  the main selection course, lasted from Monday to Friday. Its aim was to see if we had basic map-reading skills: if the potential SBS enjoyed the wet and cold, long mud runs, crouching in sodden bushes all night with thousands of ravenous mosquitoes; if they could run a mile in five minutes, swim twenty-five metres underwater and sit on the bottom of the deep end in a small, dark chamber (simulating a submarine lockout) without face-masks and sharing one aqualung between three without getting panicky or claustrophobic.

The first few weeks of the main selection course are designed to wear them down mentally and physically and get them to a level of fatigue the instructors would then control throughout. The map marches, done individually whilst carrying up to one  hundred-pound packs, will grow longer each time until they were covering up to thirty miles in a single march. Sleep is kept to a minimum and often  interrupted after the first few of extra-curricular activity are known as 'beastings' and were frequent and innovative. Over one third of the selection course is spent in the field sleeping out. On long marches the directing staff (DS) liked to surprise them and do things such as giving them one minute to consult their maps, memories compass bearings, distances and the lie-of-the-land of the next four  or five miles, then  take their maps away and send us on. If you are caught  with spare map, the punishment would far exceed the crime. Speed as well as accuracy was important when moving from A to B. Those who did not make a rendezvous before it closed were likely to be off the course. Fail twice and you definitely were.

On top of the physical tests, by the end of selection recruits are expected to know the Morse code, to be able to calculate radio attenuation, know diving theory, including the Boyle's law and Dalton's law of partial pressures - Archimedes' principle, explosive theory, including Munroe effect, electrical and igniferous detonations, basic sea navigation, and photography, which include developing film in the field. During the diving phase they will  cover miles underwater, day and night, in mostly zero visibility and freezing conditions using re-breather bubbleless diving sets. The sets were fine until it leaked. The first warning sign was that, instead of air, you sucked up a caustic soda cocktail (sea-water mixing with carbon dioxide absorbent powder), which was a bit like drinking a glass of fizzy antifreeze. If you were in deep water at that time you choked to throw it up as you made your way to the surface, without being able to take a breath, and having to remember to exhale to avoid an embolism. The safety boat always carried a bottle of vinegar to pour down your neck when you surfaced to neutralised the alkaline soda, which was a delightful drink as the cocktail, but at least it eased the burning.

Today, an SBS rank has to pass the SAS selection before he can move on and attempt SBS selection. On  passing the SAS, he is technically qualified to join the SAS. By continuing on and passing for the SBS, a more selective process involving diving, boating and Maritime anti-terrorism (MAT) training.