3 Hitting the target
To destroy Luftwaffe airfields, the SAS first had to find them. That’s where MIKE SADLER came into his own
The first raid launched by L Detachment T – Operation Squatter – was a disaster. Dozens of men were parachuted into the desert in November 1941, in weather conditions so stormy and treacherous that no targets were reached, and fewer than half the men who jumped escaped death or capture.
In the aftermath, David Stirling and Jock Lewes agreed that, for the time being at least, the SAS would not parachute onto targets. Instead, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a motorised desert unit, would act as L Detachment’s taxi service, carrying them by truck to and from operations.
Natural navigator
One member of the LRDG, Mike Sadler, became invaluable to the SAS. On leaving school in England, Sadler had travelled to southern Africa, where he worked as a farm assistant. When war broke out he became an anti-tank gunner, then, after a chance meeting in a bar, joined the LRDG and trained as a navigator. “I was so tickled,” he says, “by the idea of being able to find where you were by looking at the stars.”
Sadler used a theodolite and wireless receiver by night to mark his position, and a sand compass by day to remain on a bearing. He found his relationship with the landscape constantly evolving. “You were continually shoved off course by hills or rocks or boulders,” he says.
During the first half of 1942, Sadler took part in both LRDG and SAS operations. That summer, though, Stirling got hold of some tough American vehicles known to British soldiers as ‘Willys Bantams’ – the earliest Jeeps. The SAS could now drive to and from raids – but this posed two problems. First, very few SAS members, many of whom had been raised in relative poverty during the Depression, knew how to drive. Second, the LRDG had provided not only transport but also navigational expertise. How would the SAS find its way?
The first problem was solved by hastily arranging driving lessons, the second by engaging Sadler as L Detachment’s senior navigator – though he was never actually asked if he wanted to join the SAS. “All I knew,” he says, “was that David Stirling decided he wanted me – and somehow he got me.”
This was how the Jeep – a relatively late addition to L Detachment’s desert compendium – became the most instantly recognisable symbol of the wartime SAS. Sadler’s defining moment as navigator – his “finest hour”, according to colleague Jim Almonds – probably came in July 1942. On an ambitious mission, he guided numerous Jeeps and their adrenaline-pumped crews across the desert to Sidi Haneish airfield in northwestern Egypt, a key link in the supply chain for Axis forces in the region.
“Where’s this bloody airfield, then, Sadler?” asked Stirling, after many hours of driving. “I think it’s about a mile ahead,” answered Sadler – at which moment a brilliant array of landing lights switched on precisely where he was indicating. In the ensuing raid, dozens of Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed by fire from 68 Vickers K guns as the SAS party’s Jeeps moved steadily across the airfield in tight formation.
The SAS was gaining a fearsome reputation. As Stirling had envisaged, the psychological impact of a shapeless threat destroying aircraft and breaking lines of communication had been profound. Now, as Rommel’s forces fled west in late 1942 following their defeat at El Alamein, Stirling spotted an opportunity to harry them. Not only would this assist the Allied effort, but it would advertise the SAS as a force deserving of a major role in any coming theatre of war – particularly if it could become the first element of Eighth Army to meet up with the Anglo-American force, which would be moving east after its invasion of French-held territories in Morocco and Algeria.
Narrow escape
But then disaster struck. In January 1943, Stirling was captured by the Germans; Sadler narrowly escaped the same fate, slogging through the desert on foot before reaching safety at a French Foreign Legion outpost. Sadler and two SAS colleagues were handed on to an American unit at Gafsa, becoming almost certainly the first members of Eighth Army to make contact with the Americans. This deeply symbolic encounter was witnessed by journalist AJ Liebling, who filed a piece for The New Yorker magazine. Sadler had inadvertently fulfilled Stirling’s desire to advertise the SAS, even if his boss wasn’t on hand to see it happen.
Mike Sadler is, at the time of writing, alive and well at the age of 103.