The Mammoth Book of Elite Forces: Graphic Accounts of Military Exploits by the World's Special Forces

In 1980 Britain's Special Air Service, founded in North Africa in 1941, took on several Palestinian liberationists and members of Baader-Meinhof, a revolutionary organization, who hijacked a plane full of passengers. In 1941, members of Italy's Underwater Division of the 10th motor torpedo boat, aka the human torpedoes, drove underwater ""chariots"" amidst the British Mediterranean fleet and attached explosive warheads to the hulls of several ships. Despite the heroic stand of French Legionnaires, the nationalist-communist Viet Minh triumphed in 1954, effectively marking the end of French government in Vietnam. These and numerous other feats are recounted by participants, journalists and historians in The Mammoth Book of Elite Forces, edited by Jon E. Lewis. Nearly half of the accounts focus on WWII, and all of them feature Western armies. (Jan.)