Special Forces
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50 free Special Forces trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Special forces work in small teams, far from help, on missions that are often kept secret for decades. That mix of skill, nerve and mystery is why their raids fill bestseller lists and cinema screens, and why so many people wonder whether they could pass the selection courses. This quiz covers elite units from the Second World War to the present day: the commandos and desert raiders who invented the trade, modern counter-terrorism teams, famous hostage sieges, the selection ordeals that break most candidates, and the badges, nicknames and equipment that set these soldiers apart. It is written for military history fans, veterans, action-film watchers and anyone testing their special ops knowledge before a pub quiz. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the questions for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Why did founder Richard Marcinko name his new Navy counter-terrorism unit SEAL Team Six in 1980?
To fool Soviet spies
The name was meant to fool Soviet spies into counting SEAL teams that did not exist. The Navy had only two at the time.
Q 02How did the first Green Berets in Afghanistan after 9/11, portrayed in the film 12 Strong, travel into battle?
On horseback
They rode on horseback because their Afghan allies' mounts were the only transport suited to the mountains. Only the team's captain had real riding experience.
Q 03Which TV survival host served as a trooper with 21 SAS before a skydiving accident broke his back?
Bear Grylls
Bear Grylls spent three years in the reserve regiment, then climbed Everest just 18 months after breaking three vertebrae when his canopy failed over Zambia.
Q 04Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in a 2011 helicopter raid on a walled compound in which Pakistani city?
Abbottabad
Abbottabad is a garrison town, and the hideout stood under a mile from Pakistan's military academy. One of the raiders' stealth helicopters crashed inside the walls.
Q 05What do Navy SEAL candidates call the five and a half days of near-sleepless training early in BUD/S?
Hell Week
Hell Week gives each candidate about four hours of sleep in total while running more than 200 miles. It arrives in only the fourth week of the course.
Q 06The British SAS first came to public attention in 1980 by storming which country's embassy in London?
Iran
Iran's embassy had been seized by six gunmen, and the soldiers abseiled from the roof to end the siege in a 17-minute assault shown live on television.
Q 07Which US president championed the green beret as official headgear for Army Special Forces?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy visited Fort Bragg in 1961 and asked the soldiers to wear the beret, which a post commander had banned five years earlier.
Q 08Israeli commandos flew 2,500 miles in 1976 to free hijacked airline passengers held at Entebbe in which country?
Uganda
Uganda's dictator Idi Amin backed the hijackers, so the raiders drove up in a black Mercedes like his to deceive the airport guards.
Q 09British SAS desert patrol Land Rovers, stripped of doors and windscreens, were famously painted which colour?
Pink
Pink proved effective desert camouflage, and the long-range patrol vehicles became known as Pink Panthers.
Q 10Which riot-control device was first used in action by the British SAS counter-terrorist wing in the 1970s?
Stun grenade
The stun grenade, or flashbang, was thrown by two SAS men in 1977 to distract the hijackers as German commandos stormed a Lufthansa airliner.
Q 11Which US president ordered Operation Eagle Claw, the failed 1980 mission to rescue American hostages in Tehran?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter later blamed the failure for his election defeat that year. Eight servicemen died when a helicopter struck a transport plane at the desert staging area.
Q 12The 1993 battle retold in Black Hawk Down pitted US Rangers and Delta Force against militia in which country?
Somalia
Somalia's capital turned a raid planned to last an hour into an overnight battle once helicopters were shot down over the city.
Q 13Which motto is worked into the cap badge of the British Special Air Service?
Who Dares Wins
Q 21Which officer founded the SAS in 1941 after slipping into Cairo headquarters on crutches to pitch the idea?
David Stirling
David Stirling was nicknamed the Phantom Major by his German enemies. Captured in Tunisia in 1943, he tried to escape so often that he was sent to Colditz Castle.
Q 22Which US Army colonel created Delta Force after serving as an exchange officer with the British SAS?
Charles Beckwith
Charles Beckwith led an SAS troop on jungle operations during that tour, and caught a disease so severe that doctors did not expect him to live.
Q 23Whose 18th-century rules for frontier raiding are quoted on the first page of the US Army's Ranger handbook?
Robert Rogers
Who Dares Wins has since been borrowed by other units, including a French parachute regiment that traces its roots to wartime SAS squadrons.
Q 14Cairo, the dog that went with Navy SEALs on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, was which breed?
Belgian Malinois
A Belgian Malinois, Cairo was there to track anyone who fled the compound and to help search for hidden rooms and doors.
Q 15Which Hollywood star co-directed and starred in The Green Berets, a 1968 war film made with Pentagon help?
John Wayne
John Wayne turned down a part in The Dirty Dozen to make the film, which he planned as a tribute after visiting troops in South Vietnam.
Q 16Which Arizona Cardinals safety left the NFL after the September 11 attacks to become a US Army Ranger?
Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman had once refused a $9 million offer from another team out of loyalty to his club. He was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004.
Q 17Which spy novelist, then a naval intelligence officer, proposed Britain's 30 Assault Unit of commandos in 1942?
Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming wanted commandos to go in with the first troops and grab enemy codes and equipment. He later drew on those men when he created James Bond.
Q 18Bill Millin landed with Lord Lovat's commandos on D-Day armed only with a small knife and which instrument?
Bagpipes
Bagpipes were banned from the front line, but Lovat told Millin the rule came from the English War Office and that both of them were Scottish.
Q 19Who issued the secret Commando Order of 1942, under which captured Allied raiders were to be shot?
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler had only 12 copies made, and some commanders, including Erwin Rommel, refused to pass the order on to their troops.
Q 20How does a candidate formally quit the Navy SEALs' BUD/S course, a ritual known as Drop on Request?
Rings a brass bell
He rings a brass bell three times and leaves his helmet liner beside it. A significant number of candidates reach that point during the first phase.
Robert Rogers wrote his 28 Rules of Ranging during the French and Indian War, then raised a ranger unit for the British side in the American Revolution.
Q 24Which scar-faced SS officer did Nazi propaganda credit with the 1943 glider raid that freed Mussolini?
Otto Skorzeny
Otto Skorzeny had insisted on going along: paratroop officers planned and led the mission, and he then overloaded the tiny plane sent to fly Mussolini out.
Q 25Which future Israeli prime minister wore a woman's disguise on a 1973 Sayeret Matkal commando raid in Beirut?
Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak, the unit's commander, went ashore as a brunette because planners feared that a group of men walking the city at midnight would raise suspicion.
Q 26A British commando raid rammed an explosive-packed destroyer into the dry dock gates of which French port in 1942?
St Nazaire
St Nazaire was hit so that the battleship Tirpitz, if damaged, would have to sail home for repairs. The hidden charges kept the dock out of use until 1948.
Q 27Royal Marines dubbed the Cockleshell Heroes raided Bordeaux harbour in 1942 after travelling upriver in what?
Folding kayaks
Folding kayaks launched from a submarine carried the raiders up the Gironde after dark. Only two of the ten men who set out came home.
Q 28Norwegian commandos trained by Britain's SOE blew up the Vemork plant in 1943 to deny Nazi Germany which substance?
Heavy water
Heavy water was vital to German nuclear weapons research. After the raid, resistance fighters sank the ferry carrying the last stocks to Germany.
Q 29Which pen name did the SAS patrol commander use for Bravo Two Zero, his account of a doomed 1991 Gulf War mission?
Andy McNab
Andy McNab is really Steven Mitchell. Two other members of his eight-man patrol later published accounts of their own that disputed his version.
Q 30On D-Day, US Army Rangers climbed ropes and ladders up sheer cliffs to attack a gun battery at which headland?
Pointe du Hoc
Pointe du Hoc's gun pits held no guns when the climbers arrived. A patrol found five of the guns hidden nearby and wrecked them with thermite charges.