Mike Sadler didn’t need maps, headlights, or paved roads to find his target – just the stars

Sadler was born in Kensington in Central London on February 22, 1920

His early education was shaped by the Montessori method, which promotes independent thought and learning

In 1937, dissatisfied with life in England, he left for the British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to work on a tobacco farm

In 1939, World War II broke out

North Africa emerged as a major front in the war between the Allies and the Axis and, excited by the prospect of war, Sadler joined an artillery unit

Known for his independent spirit, though, Sadler quickly found himself at odds with rigid military discipline

When a senior officer ordered him to keep his boots on while in his sleeping bag, he refused

Rather than apologize for his insubordination, Sadler voluntarily gave up his rank as a sergeant

“I wasn’t at all keen on the extreme aspects of militarism, marching up and down,” he later told a military historian, “although I did my best to be reasonably smart”

Seeking a change, Sadler took leave and traveled to Egypt

It was there, in a Cairo bar, where he met the men who would change his life

In Cairo, he encountered members of the recently formed Long Range Desert Group (LRDG)

Set up in 1940, the group provided navigation to the newly-formed Special Air Services (SAS), a British special forces service

The SAS was tasked with mounting behind-the-lines attacks against German and Italian forces

From Cairo, Sadler set off on a 700-mile journey to LRDG’s base in south-east Libya

Without roadmarks or reliable roads, navigating the desert was a formidable challenge

“It was entirely like being at sea,” he would say later

“The maps, except in the very coastal regions, had nothing much on them except longitude and latitude lines and the odd dotted line marking a camel track or something”

Without modern navigational tools, the LRDG guided their movements with stars in the night sky

Sadler became fascinated by LRDG’s ability to navigate using the stars

By the time he arrived at the base, he was offered the role of unit navigator

“The idea of navigating by the stars was so fascinating I couldn’t resist,” he said

They gave him just a few weeks to master the theodolite, a star-gazing device used by surveyors, and read celestial charts, which tracked the movement of stars at night

By 1941, the newly-founded SAS was in trouble

Its first mission had been a disaster, resulting in 34 of 55 men either being captured or killed

So in a December 1941 mission, the SAS decided to rely on Sadler to lead them to success

Using the sun and stars, Sadler guided the team ~400 miles in only a few days

He led their stripped-down vehicles through wadis and wind-packed sand from an oasis deep in the Sahara to the target airfield in Libya

The SAS pulled off the surprise attack, destroying 24 aircraft and injuring or killing 30 enemy soldiers

That success set in motion a new guerrilla-style campaign led by the SAS, which Sadler joined

During another raid on a German airfield in Egypt in July 1942, Sadler navigated 18 jeeps across the desert without headlights or maps

Storming across the airfield while firing with their machine-guns, the men destroyed 37 aircraft

Sadler waited at the edge of the airfield to make sure everyone got out, but he was left behind

This time, however, he did not need the stars to escape

“I only got away from the airfield at dawn, after the raid, and found myself driving through a German column that had set out into the desert to look for us,” he recalled

“I drove through the column from the back and nobody noticed. I don’t think they expected anyone to be behind”

“They’d stopped to have a cup of tea on the roadside, and I drove on and out”

Later in 1943, Sadler was part of a small team looking for a route for the British forces to outflank the Germans and link up with allied forces in Tunisia

The Germans quickly captured his team, but Sadler and two colleagues escaped, crossing 100 miles of desert with little water and no compass or maps to meet up with US troops

Sadler would later say his ability to follow the stars came from a forced sense of confidence

“You have to be confident because it was awfully easy, especially at night, to start feeling you’re going wrong and you should be further to left or right,” he once told a military historian

“It was rather easy to give way to that feeling if you weren’t confident”

When the war ended and his group disbanded, Sadler – forever the daring navigator – volunteered to go to Antarctica as part of a British expedition

He received the Polar Medal for establishing a base on the Artic Stonington Island, whose surrounding waters were later renamed Sadler's Passage

Transitioning from his Antarctic adventures, the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, recruited him to plan cold-war operations

He had a long, distinguished career there, working into his mid-80s before retiring in England

He lost his eyesight in his later years, and spent his final days in a nursing home before passing away this month at age 103

Sadler’s eyes may have failed him in old age, but in youth, they were cast up at the stars

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