What Happened to Writer/Pilot Saint-Exupery?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, most famous for being the author of The Little Prince, was 43 when he volunteered to help the Free French Forces in World War II. At 8:45 a.m. on July 31, 1944, Saint-Exupéry took off from the island of Corsica in a Lockheed Lightning P-38 on a reconnaissance mission over occupied France. Although he was due back around 12:30 p.m., he never returned.

When Saint-Exupéry set out on that fateful day, he was already an experience pilot. Saint-Exupéry had first learned to fly when he joined the French Army Air Force in 1921 and then had continued his aviation career by becoming a mail postal pilot in the Sahara Desert. Saint-Exupéry loved flying so much that many of his early writings are about life in the cockpit.

For decades, no one knew the fate of this famous writer and it became another aviation mystery similar to Amelia Earhart. In 1988, the fist clue to his fate surfaced when a fisherman found what looked like a bracelet belonging to Saint-Exupéry. After searching around the area, Saint-Exupéry's plane was found and brought to the surface in 2004. His body was not inside.

Although many people would have left the unfolding fate of Saint-Exupéry end there, Lino von Gartzen kept searching. By piecing together a few clues, Gartzen tracked down WWII Luftwaffe pilot Horst Rippert. It appears that Rippert might have been the man who shot down Saint-Exupéry. Rippert, a long-time fan of Saint-Exupéry, was devastated when he learned he might be the one responsible for the author's demise. For more about how Gartzen found Rippert, read this New York Times article.