Messerschmitt

Compared with the commandos he guided on truck and jeep convoys — volunteer daredevils who crept onto Nazi airfields; attached time bombs to Messerschmitt fighters, Stuka dive bombers, fuel dumps and pilot quarters; then sped away as explosions roared behind — Mr. Sadler was no hero in the usual sense.

Keith Miller, all-rounder in Don Bradman's Invincibles and a World War II pilot, once said pressure is a Messerschmitt on your tail - "playing cricket is not".

In those exchanges over North Africa, Mr. Edwards flew U.S.-built P-40 Kittyhawk fighters, far heavier and slower than the German Messerschmitt Bf 109, which made his achievements all the more remarkable.

While escorting Allied light bombers, he and other fliers strafed a German ground base and, when engaged in an aerial dogfight with the Luftwaffe, he shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 109, his first “kill.”

A hangar containing a Messerschmitt?