Operations

The raids that made the units

Landmark special forces operations, told from official records — and the fitness standards you would have to meet to join the units that carried them out.

• Operation Neptune Spear, 2011: the raid on Abbottabad

  1–2 May 2011 · Abbottabad, Pakistan · In under 40 minutes on the ground, a small team of US Navy SEALs found and killed Osama bin Laden in a compound in Pakistan — nearly ten years after 9/11.

• GROM in Iraq, 2003: the night the oil platforms were taken

  20–21 March 2003 · Persian Gulf · On the second night of the Iraq War, Polish commandos and US Navy SEALs seized the two offshore terminals that carried most of Iraq's oil exports — before they could be blown up.

• The Battle of Mogadishu, 1993: Task Force Ranger's longest night

  3–4 October 1993 · Mogadishu, Somalia · A daylight raid planned to take under an hour turned into a fight of about 15 hours. Eighteen US soldiers were killed; two Black Hawks were shot down.

• Operation Nimrod, 1980: the SAS at the Iranian Embassy

  30 April – 5 May 1980 · London · For six days in 1980 gunmen held 26 people inside the Iranian Embassy in London. The siege ended with an SAS assault broadcast live on British television.

• Operation Feuerzauber, 1977: GSG 9 storms the Landshut

  13–18 October 1977 · Mogadishu · Five days after it was hijacked on a flight from Palma de Mallorca, the Lufthansa jet "Landshut" was stormed on the runway in Mogadishu. All hostages were freed in about seven minutes.