Who Dares Wins in Business: How military principles can be employed for business success by Sharpe Joff

Author:Sharpe , Joff [Sharpe , Joff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2021-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

What happened at the Embassy?

In London, further layers of preparation were unfolding. The Cabinet’s emergency committee COBRA had practiced many scenarios, particularly the seizure of North Sea oil rigs, and quickly established effective crisis management at government level. In Number 14 Princes Gate, next door to the embassy, Scotland Yard’s C13 anti-terrorist command under John Dellow set up an operations room and regular police cordoned off the area. Ambulances were put on standby and brought closer. The SAS arrived at Regents Park Barracks and discussed an “Immediate Action Plan”. In essence, if the terrorists started killing all the hostages the SAS would literally blow the windows and doors and charge in, saving whoever they could. This necessitated moving in with C13 next door. Meanwhile, new information was flowing in thick and fast. A BBC cameraman, Chris Cramer, was released with severe stomach pains and was interviewed to determine the number of terrorists and weapons (6 men, 2 submachine-guns, 2 pistols and a grenade). The Foreign office had located six visa applications which gave names, faces and limited histories to the terrorists which were then placed on a pin board for the team to study. Someone also managed to track down the embassy caretaker in his humble bedsit. His information was the most critical of all. He knew that both ground and first floor windows were constructed of bullet-proof glass. If the assault team had used sledge-hammers instead of explosives to break in they would still be pounding away now, or handing over to someone of less pensionable age. The caretaker also looked at architects’ drawings and fleshed out more vital detail. There is another Army expression beyond the ‘7 Ps’, namely; “Time spent in reconnaissance is rarely wasted.” When night fell members of the team climbed up onto the embassy roof, discovering a large glass dome and a skylight. Gingerly, they opened the skylight and looked down. Beneath them was a toilet and bathroom; the perfect entry point.

If you want to know what happened next, look it up on YouTube. An iconic BBC newsreel captures the moment when two soldiers jump between first floor balconies the next day and blast their way into the building through a window, (thanks to the caretaker). But let me tell you what didn’t happen. When the night-time recce group discovered the open hatch they reported straight back to the Operations Room and explained what they had discovered. The terrorists and hostages appeared to be largely asleep and in darkness. The team could put on passive night goggles (PNGs), which you often now see in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, providing infra-red night vision. They would then attach silencers to their Heckler Koch MP5 weapons and slip quietly into the building. There would be no stun grenades, no “Harvey wall-banger” framed charges blowing in windows, no loud staccato bursts of machine-gun fire, no yelling. They would advance through the building like black-clad spectres (with apologies to Harry Potter) and silently eliminate the terrorists one by one.

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