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Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling, (15 November 1915 – 4 November 1990) was a Scottish officer in the British Army and the founder and creator of the Special Air Service (SAS). Under his leadership, the SAS carried out hit-and-run raids behind the Axis lines of the North African campaign. He saw active service during the Second World War until he was captured in January 1943. He spent the rest of the war in captivity, despite making several attempts to escape.
Stirling left the Regular Army in 1947. He settled in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and founded the Capricorn Africa Society, which aimed to fight racial discrimination in Africa, but Stirling's preference for a limited, elitist voting franchise over universal suffrage limited the movement's appeal. He subsequently formed various private military companies and was linked with a failed attempt to overthrow the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the early 1970s. He also attempted to organise efforts to undermine Trade union and to overthrow the British government, none of which made significant headway. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1990, and died later the same year.
Stirling was educated in England at the Catholic boarding school Ampleforth College alongside his elder brother Bill Stirling. He was part of the Ampleforth Officer Training Corps. He briefly attended Trinity College, Cambridge, before being "sent down" (i.e. expelled) for 28 transgressions of which the master of the college asked him to select three which would be the "least offensive to his mother". He then went to Paris to unsuccessfully attempt to become an artist.
Believing that taking his idea up the chain of command was unlikely to work, Stirling decided to go straight to the top. On crutches following a parachuting accident, he stealthily entered Middle East headquarters in Cairo (under, through, or over a fence) in an effort to see Commander-in-Chief, Middle East Command General Sir Claude Auchinleck. Spotted by guards, Stirling abandoned his crutches and entered the building, only to come face-to-face with an officer with whom he had previously fallen out. Retreating rapidly, he entered the office of the deputy chief of staff, Major General Neil Ritchie. Stirling explained his plan to Ritchie, immediately after which Ritchie persuaded Auchinleck to allow Stirling to form a new special operations unit. The unit was given the deliberately misleading name "L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade" to reinforce Dudley Clarke's deception of a parachute brigade existing in North Africa.
After a brief period of training, an initial attempt at attacking a German airfield by parachute landing on 16 November 1941 in support of Operation Crusader proved to be disastrous for the unit. Of the original 55 men, some 34 were killed, wounded or captured far from the target, after being blown off course or landing in the wrong area, during one of the biggest storms to hit the region. Escaping only with the help of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) – who were designated to pick up the unit after the attack – Stirling agreed that approaching by land under the cover of night would be safer and more effective than parachuting. As quickly as possible he organised raids on ports using this simple method, bluffing through checkpoints at night using the language skills of some of his soldiers.
Under Stirling's leadership, the Lewes bomb, the first hand-held dual explosive and incendiary device, was invented by Jock Lewes. American Jeeps, which were able to deal with the harsh desert terrain better than other transport, were cut down, adapted and fitted with Vickers K machine guns fore and aft. Stirling also pioneered the use of small groups to escape detection. Finding it difficult to lead from the rear, Stirling often led from the front, his SAS units driving through enemy airfields in the Jeeps to shoot up aircraft and crew.
' (1ere Compagnie de Chasseurs Parachutistes) in Tunisia.
Previously a company of Free France paratroopers, the French SAS squadron were the first of a range of units 'acquired' by Major Stirling as the SAS expanded.]]
The first Jeep-borne airfield raid occurred soon after acquiring the first batch of Jeeps in June 1942, when Stirling's SAS group attacked the Italian-held Bagush airfield along with two other Axis airfields all in the same night. After returning to Cairo, Stirling collected a consignment of more Jeeps for further airfield raids. His biggest success was on the night of 26–27 July 1942 when his SAS squadron, armed with 18 jeeps, raided the Sidi Haneish landing strip and destroyed 37 Axis aircraft (mostly bombers and heavy transport) for the loss of two men killed. After a drive through the desert, evading enemy patrols and aircraft, Stirling and his men reached the safety of their advance camp at Qaret Tartura on the edge of the Qattara Depression. (2025). 9781101904169, Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 9781101904169 He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in September 1942.
In North Africa, in the 15 months before Stirling's capture, the SAS had destroyed over 250 aircraft on the ground, dozens of supply dumps, wrecked railways and telecommunications, and had put hundreds of enemy vehicles out of action.
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery said "The boy Stirling is quite mad, quite, quite mad. However, in a war there is often a place for mad people.".
Business was chiefly with the Gulf States. He was linked, along with Denys Rowley, to a failed attempt to overthrow the ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 1970 or 1971. Stirling was the founder of “private military company” KAS International, also known as KAS Enterprises.
Watchguard International Ltd was a private military company, registered in Jersey in 1965 by Stirling and John Woodhouse. Woodhouse's first assignment was to go to Yemen to report on the state of the royalist forces when a cease-fire was declared. At the same time Stirling was cultivating his contacts in the Iranian government and exploring the chances of obtaining work in Africa. The company operated in Zambia and in Sierra Leone, providing training teams and advising on security matters, but its founders' maverick ways of doing business caused its eventual downfall. Woodhouse resigned as Director of Operations after a series of disagreements and Stirling ceased to take an active part in 1972. The SAS: Savage Wars of Peace: 1947 to the Present, by Anthony Kemp, John Murray, 1994, pp. 88–89
In August 1974, before Stirling was ready to go public with GB75, the pacifist magazine Peace News obtained and published his plans. His biographer Alan Hoe disputed the newspaper's disparaging portrayal of Stirling as a right-wing 'Colonel Blimp'.
In 1984 the new base of the SAS was renamed Stirling Lines (from Bradbury Lines) in his honour.
In 2002 the SAS memorial, a statue of Stirling standing on a rock, was unveiled on the Hill of Row near his family's estate at Park of Keir. Two bronze plaques were stolen from the statue sometime around the end of May 2014. The current Laird of the Keir estate is his nephew Archie Stirling, a millionaire businessman and former Scots Guards officer.
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