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Sadler then waited for them on the outskirts of the airfield itself. The raid was a significant strike, with about 30 German officers killed, 24 planes and a fuel dump destroyed.

The way back, however, was not straightforward Sadler always said that his main worry was not the operation itself but "how the hell we were going to get away afterwards because the Germans were on to us".

On this occasion they evaded pursuit and headed in their Jeeps for a rendezvous 150 miles west. One Jeep sustained a puncture, the captured German pump did not work and they had to stuff blankets into the tyre. But the wheel disintegrated to the point where they were running on the brake drum and had to abandon the vehicle.

The other Jeep needed water, but the spare jerry can had been accidentally poured into the petrol tank, leaving the men too without water, and the Jeep stalled. They all peed into the radiator and, at Sadler's initiative, rigged up a siphon feeding petrol from a spare can into the carburettor. When they reached the rendezvous "some Stukas came down and did a bit of a strafe".

Another raid was on the airfield at Sidi Haneish, which involved astro-navigating 18 Jeeps across 70 miles of desert without lights or maps. Sadler delivered them to within a mile of the runway. Firing about 26,000 rounds of ammunition from their Vickers machine guns, they destroyed an estimated 37 aircraft in a spectacular display which he photographed (unfortunately, his camera and film were stolen later in the war). During the escape they inadvertently drove through the German column that was pursuing them "They were standing around their vehicles… They were not alert… I drove through German columns a few times."

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