Historical Heroes: The Special Air Service

The SAS was created in WWII, and brought an unorthodox approach to fighting the enemy using audacious bluff and nerve. By Damien Lewis.

General Sir John Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), inspects new parachutists for the operation.

Operation Colossus, Southern Italy, February 1941

On the 10 February 1941, thirty-six British raiders parachuted into the night skies above Fascist Italy to undertake a mission of breath-taking daring: to blow up the Aqueduct Pugliese, source of the fresh-water for the cities in the south of the country and the key ports used by the Italian armed forces. Codenamed Operation Colossus, this was the first ever Allied airborne operation, and it was carried out by 11 Special Air Service Brigade, the forerunner of David Stirling’s soon-to-be-legendary SAS. According to the raider’s commanding officer, Major ‘Tag’ Pritchard, his force would be ‘pioneers or guinea pigs, whichever way you prefer to look at it.’

Operation Colossus was an utterly audacious and daring undertaking, but not everything went to plan that night. One of the Whitley warplanes carrying the team of Royal Engineer sappers went missing, along with the bulk of the explosives. Plus the mission briefings proved woefully wrong, mistakenly reporting the piers of the aqueduct to be constructed of brickwork, instead of reinforced concrete – which would take far more explosive power to destroy.

Everything now relied upon the genius and nerve of the one remaining sapper in Pritchard’s team – Canadian Lieutenant George Robert Paterson. A tough resolute giant of a man known, Paterson decided there was only one option: to pack all the crates of explosives around the one pier and hope for the best. Have lit the fuse, and after a thunderous roar, Paterson and his fellow raiders witnessed a fabulous sight: the Aqueduct Pugliese was cut in two, its precious water cascading into the valley below.