SAS hero Mike Sadler famed for ‘superhuman’ ability to navigate desert once led 100-mile trek without water and maps
THE last surviving member of the original SAS – who navigated the deserts of North Africa by the stars – died yesterday aged 103.
Major Mike Sadler’s extraordinary career included stints as a farmer, sailor, soldier and spy.
He parachuted into France after the D-Day landings, worked for MI6 and had part of the Antarctic named in his honour.
But perhaps his greatest claim to fame was his time as chief navigator to SAS founder David Stirling.
General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, an ex-Army boss and Colonel Commandant of the SAS, last night hailed Sadler as “remarkably self- effacing and exceptionally modest”.
He said: “Mike Sadler was the living embodiment of the tenets and ethos of the SAS. He was very softly spoken but one could detect a real inner resolve and steeliness.
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“When I met him he was already a very old man, but it didn’t surprise one at all that he had an active and successful war record.”
During his service, twice-married Sadler — who is survived by daughter Sally — didn’t have GPS, satellites or reliable landmarks in the vast, shifting sand dunes where the early SAS launched its raids.
So he relied on the sun, stars and a system of dead reckoning — measuring distance and direction.
In December 1941, just five months after the SAS was founded, Sadler took part in the first successful raid on the Wadi Tamet airfield, where a team of six men destroyed 24 Axis war planes and a fuel dump.
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It was a far cry from his early life.
Born in London in 1920, he left school at 17 to study farming in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
As World War Two loomed, he enlisted in the Rhodesian infantry, but was soon bored with guarding German internees.
He got himself discharged by claiming he was a key agricultural worker, then immediately rejoined the artillery.
As a gunner and later an anti-tank specialist he was dispatched to Somaliland, then Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), and finally to Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, with orders to dig defences against a German assault on Suez.
On a drunken night in a Cairo bar he was recruited into the Long Range Desert Group. Its founder, Major Ralph Bagnold, had mastered navigating the desert.
Most of his first soldiers were ex-farmers from New Zealand and Rhodesia.
Sadler joined the Rhodesia patrol and later said he “couldn’t resist” the romance of navigating by the stars.
‘I liked the challenge’
Luckily, he proved a quick learner. “I was interested in it,” he said later.
“I suppose I have a natural feel for it. I liked the challenge.”
Sadler was serving with the LRDG when he took part in the Wadi Tamet raid.
On the way back they survived an attack by Italian fighter bombers.
According to his comrades, his desert navigation skills bordered on “superhuman”.
At Stirling’s request, he joined the SAS’s L Detachment, which earned him “originals” status.
In the summer of 1942 he guided a convoy of 18 jeeps across 70 miles of desert in darkness, without headlights or a map, to within 200ft of the Sidi Haneish airfield.
The SAS, whose motto is Who Dares Wins, caught the enemy by surprise and drove past the unguarded planes, destroying at least 37 with heavy fire from their jeep-mounted Vickers machine guns.
For his part in the two airfield raids Sadler was awarded the Military Medal.
In January 1943 Sadler and Stirling were ambushed as they tried to outflank German troops in Tunisia.
Stirling was captured and spent the rest of the conflict as a prisoner of war in Colditz.
Sadler escaped and led two comrades on an epic, 100-mile trek, without maps, water or food, to the lines of the American army.
A US war correspondent who saw him emerge from the desert wrote: “The eyes of this fellow were round and sky blue and his hair and whiskers were very fair. His beard began well under his chin, giving him the air of an emaciated, slightly dotty Paul Verlaine.”
SAS legend Andy McNab, who wrote the best-selling Bravo Two Zero, said Sadler and comrades set the regiment’s culture of excellence.
He added: “Men like Mike Sadler were the foundations of the Special Air Service. Their legacy was the pursuit of excellence. A lot of the procedures we still use today we owe to them.”
When the Allies defeated Hitler’s Africa Korps in 1943, Sadler was sent back to Britain to form an SAS intelligence unit ahead of the Normandy D-Day landings.
He was the living embodiment of the ethos of the SAS. Very softly spoken but with a real inner resolve & steeliness.
General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith
He jumped into France in August 1944 to link up with SAS squadrons south of Paris who were aiding the French resistance.
When his two jeep patrol encountered a far larger German convoy, he tried to bluff them with a “cheery wave”.
But as the cars came within feet of each other, the Germans opened fire.
Sadler ordered comrades in the second jeep to flee while he blasted the enemy with his machine gun.
He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry.
After the war, when the SAS was briefly disbanded, Sadler joined the Antarctic Survey and was awarded the Polar Medal.
He later joined MI6. He was portrayed in hit BBC drama SAS Rogue Heroes by Tom Glynn-Carney, 28.
The pair met in 2022 for BBC’s The One Show, when the actor admitted playing an expert navigator was a challenge on screen.
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The war hero, who by then had lost his sight, replied with a laugh: “It’s not that difficult.”
Despite being captured by the Nazis, escaping and enduring a four-day walk across the dunes, Sadler added: “I enjoyed the desert. I loved the wide open spaces.”