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This fourth entry in the new Raid series covers an event I actually remember -the pictures of the SAS on the balconies of the Iranian Embassy in London was one of the defining images of the 1980s, and brought the privative regiment out of the shadows and into the limelight.
This look at the siege falls into three roughly equal sections. The first third looks at the history of the SAS, the evolution of its counter-terrorism role and the background to the siege. The second looks at the six days of the siege, and the SAS planning and preparation. The third looks at the hostage rescue itself, emphasising just how quick the actual operation was.
One new problem introduced in this volume is that of operating in a peacetime legal framework. The SAS soldiers involved in the raid knew that they would have to justify every shot afterwards (successfully in this case). This makes for a very different environment to the purely military considerations in the first three volumes.
The complexity of the SAS assault is well illustrated by a cut-away 3D diagram of the embassy, showing each point of entry and the major incidents of the surprisingly brief fight.
This an interesting read that tells the inside story of an event that for me had previously been no more than a series of frozen images (included on pages 41-45).
Author: Gregory Fremont-Barnes
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 64
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2009