On the night before Christmas 1941, a tall athletic man crept unseen onto an Italian airstrip at Tamet, on the Libyan coast, midway between Tripoli to the west and Benghazi in the east. Lt. Robert Blair Mayne, “Paddy” to his acquaintances, was accompanied by five other raiders of Britain’s deadly Special Air Service.
A fortnight earlier Mayne and a similar-sized raiding party had visited Tamet for the first time, destroying 24 aircraft and bursting into an Italian billet, shooting dead about 30 startled aircrew. The Italians had since tightened security, but the 6ft 2in Mayne led his men onto the airfield without impediment. “The enemy was on the lookout and had greatly increased the guard, placing them in batches of seven, about thirty feet apart,” remarked the Irishman. But the sentries were complacent. Perhaps they didn’t believe any raider would risk his life on this of all evenings.
“They were chattering,” recalled Mayne, as he and soldiers stole across the desert airstrip, placing their bombs on the same spot on every aircraft—on top of the wing above the fuel tank. Each bomb had a 30-minute fuze.
“We hadn’t quite finished when the first bomb went off,” said Mayne. “The Italians could see us in the light of the burning planes and began shouting, ‘Chi va la? [Who goes there]. It was the first time I’d ever been challenged, so I replied ‘freund.’” Although dazed and frightened, the Italians knew very well this imposing silhouette was no friend. “They began firing,” recounted Mayne. “But they didn’t hit us, and we just slipped through them in the dark.” Back at their base at Kabrit, 80 miles east of the Egyptian capital of Cairo, the raiders regaled the rest of the SAS with their accomplishment.
Mayne was a natural warrior. He had the rare ability to process information and make the correct decisions in the blink of an eye. He was the officer with the golden touch—unlike the aristocratic British SAS commander, David Stirling, who had twice attempted to raid Sirte airfield, five miles east of Tamet, and had twice failed. Mayne’s abilities in the field earned him his supervisor’s jealousy—a rivalry which would result in Stirling being captured, and Mayne rising as a talented military commander as leadership of the fledgling Special Forces unit fell upon his shoulders.
A champion boxer and international rugby player, Mayne had read law at Queen’s University in Belfast. Quick-witted as well as light-footed, his mind never fogged with panic even in moments of great stress. His commander Stirling, by contrast,
