10. Extreme Extractions

Some rescues read like Hollywood - except they were real. In Operation Halyard, villagers and resistance fighters built an airstrip by hand to spirit stranded airmen out of Nazi territory, while Operation Mount Hope saw American forces steal a Soviet helicopter from the African desert under cover of darkness. Decades earlier, the SAS hijacked a train in occupied Italy to liberate 200 prisoners - an extraordinary feat that proved extraction can be as daring as any assault.